The Readers Digest Omnivus

vi CONTENTS

Your Second Job. Albert Schweitzer v.

A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse. James Saxon Childers la
‘The Titanic Is Unsinkable.* Hanson I'F. Baldwin 13

When Krakatoa Blew Up. Ernst Behreadl 13!

Miracle Under the Arctic Sea.

Commander William J. Lederer, us:^ 142

The Quest of our lives. I. A R. 150

The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met. Tom Clarke 154
They Saw the Birth of a Volcano. Lois Mattox Miller 161^
^Miose Business Was It? Fulton Oursler 164.*

A Plea for Less ‘Happy’ Talk. Kathleen Xorris 171

The Discovery of Anaesthesia. Hugh H. Toung 174

Lincoln Goes to Gettysburg. Carl Sandburg 17®

Chaplain Courageous. Q^eniin Remolds 182

He Loved Me Truly. Bernadme Bail^ and Dorothy Walworth 1 89
‘We Have With Us Tonight — ^ Dale Carnegie t 95 -

Pop’s Boy. Irmn Ashkenaiy 199 »

Confessions of an Actor. John Banymore . 205

' ’WTio is this Mysterious Murderer? Joseph Bomstein 208-,

‘The Light in the Window.’ Lois Mattox Miller 2i5»f

The Enemy’s Masterpiece of Espionage. J. Edgar Hoover 218 »
Mamnia and her Bank Account. Kathryn Forbes 224

Mother’s Bills. Clarence Day 228 *

How Harmful Are Cigarettes? Roger William Rus 231

How to Guess Your Age. Corey Ford 241 *

Genius. Its Cause aftd Care. Bruce Bltsen 243

Surgerv in a Submarine. George Weller 249

What li I Had Refused? Agnes Rolhery 252

The American Language. H. L. Mencken

The Most Unforof«»M''»-’

, THE

Reader’s Digest

OMNIBUS

FOREWORD BY

H.E. BATES

and:

^ foreword

did indeed turn out to be vddely, uneasily and, for about half
the time, hideously distracdve. It was the enemy of quietness.

It was a paradox of people having more leisure to enjoy and
yet less lime, apparently, in which to enjoy it. There was alwa^
something else to do - even if it was only, for a good part of the

STurroundings, it may well have seemed &at boolis

would be inevitable victims. In fact it was not so.

ing emotion of man is fear, then it is pretty certain that his

governing appetite is inquisitiveness. He wants to blow more

Ibout himself; he wants to knowslill more about his

above all he hungers to know more about the ^airs of ^e

famous, the notorious, the aristocraPe, the odd,

adventirous, and the purely

men, both past and present, m worto that he know and

worlds that he has never a hope ,

Tincoln speak at Gettysburg? How did the Ttimtc smK.
What is It like to be a young healthy girl one minute an
Tbumt on a forci^ MWde the ne«? mat ts gernn^
L "s"Lking really kUl you? And «hat «actly ^ the M
Stream ^ lust as the novel k in reality a highly

SsMdrtrfTa^^tnott catholic gossip-coluiim to
Moreover, it differs from all other gossip-columns m “

^hZpW. nod it is that, I think, n-hich .a the secret of®

character.

♦Rirtv vears I have two lavounics, wwwav-a ... — '

Paris, London, New York and ^ £.T< Up Tmr

another year, pe ^ be™^^

First published November 1952 by
ANDRE DEUTSCH LIMITED
12 Thayer Street, Manchester Square
London Wi

Second impression November 1952
All Rights Reserved

Printed in Great Bntain by

TONBRIDGE PRINTERS LTD

Tonbridge Kent

CONTENTS

Foreword, by H E Bates * ix

Our Four Months on an Ocean Raft Thor H^erdahl ^ -

My Eyes Have a Cold Nose Hector Chemgty 9 »

London Nocturne Don Stanford 15 «

The Day We Flew the Kites Frances Fowler 19 '

■^An Open Letter to America’s Students Dwight D Eisenhower 21 »
A String of Blue Beads Fulton Oursler 27 *

A Lodging for the Night. Katharine Brush 30 *

The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met

James Saxon Childers 33 •

‘When Are You Going to Turn Respectable ’’ Thaddeus Ashly 93
The Invasion* I. The Great Decision Allan A. Mtchie 50
„ II Armada in Action Frederic Sondem Jnr. 57

„ III Beach-head Panorama Ira Jfolfert 63

The Heart. Wondrous and Courageous Organ

Heniy Morton Robinson 71

The Night My Number Came Up

Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard 74*

Journey for Margaret. IF. L. IVhite 81 *

The Basque Sheepherder and the Shepherd Psalm

James K Wallace 87

The Victorious Vratils Ralph Wallace 91

Utama of the Airways Archibald Rutledge 97,

Child Pioneer Honore Willsie Morrow 100

Obey That Impulse William Moulton Marston 105

America’s Treasure Isles Edison Marshall 1 10

God’s Eager Fool. The Reverend John A. O'Brien 1 15

V

CONTENTS Vii

/

/

Tilhc Scrubbed On. Wtlliam F McDermott and Karl Detzer 265 ,

Epic of the Arctic Ruth and Edward Brecher 269 c

Transaction in Tahiti. James Norman Hall 276 .

It Happened on the Sub\% ay. Paul Deufschman 281 »

Blue River in the Sea A. H. Z Carr 285 »

Tlie Most Unfoi^ettable Character I’ve Met
^ Robert Flaherty 288 1,

'' I Was a Male War Bride Heart Rochard 293 •

Two for a Penny. John Steinbeck 297 -

^\^len Hannah Var Eight Yar Old

Katharine Peabody Girling 302 .

\Miat Pra^ er Can Do Fulton Qiirsler 306

Petronella A G McRae 312 *

Seven Reasons t\hy a Scientist Believes in God

A. Crrssy Mormon 315

‘Mv Ninety Acres ’ Louu Bromfield 320

— ^And Sudden Death. J C Furnas 325*

Grand Cannon. Donald Culross Peatlie 331 »

State Fair Phil Stong 335

^ The Size of Lit ing Things. Julian S Huxl^ 340

Mothers of the ^Vild Archibald Rutledge 344 ^

The Best Investment I Ever Made A. J Cronin 347,

The Horse that ^Vent on a Holiday. Frederic Sondem Jnr. 351

My Most Unforgettable Character. Marc A. Rose 355

Are You Ahve^ Stuart Chase 361 .

Crash in Shangri-La Corporal Margaret Hastings, wag 363

^The Rescue on Station Charlie Captain Paul B. Cronk 379 ,

The Perfect Case Anthony Abbot 389*

Lift Up Your Eves to Man el. Cljde Fisher 394

Twenty Minutes of Reality. Margaret Prescott Montague 399*

Acknowledgements 403

FOREWORD

The present century has seen the rapid extension of five in-
ventions - six, if you count the comic-strip - all of which ofier
pleasant temptations towards a life of easy ilhteracy. These
devices, telephone, dictaphone, cinema, radio and television,
all offer aural and visual mezins of expression as substitutes for
the printed page, and it is m fact an irony of our time that they
have made it possible for modem man to run his business, enjoy
his leisure, expand his social life and even to be in some sort of
degree adult and educated \vithout the tiresome necessity of
having to read or write a word

I do not suppose that, thirty years ago, the founders of
Reader’s Digest had any idea of counteracting such tendencies.
They may well, m fact, have taken an entirely opposite view.
It is possible that they saw before them a vast new literacy,
expanding and unsatisfied They may well have reasoned that
as this literacy mcreased so the number of books published
would also mcrease, -with the result that man might choke
himself to death ivith words. They may also have reasoned that
the shape of the new century would be a bewildering kaleido-
scope of new distractions, of which in fact film and radio were
already part. Man would not only have more to read but less
and less time in which to read it. He would be like a person
entenng a restaurant for a snack lunch and finding himself
confironted ivith a table crowded with half a thousand hors
d’cemTes. Somebody would have to help him select the tastiest
morsels for himself and perhaps, in domg so - who knoivs^ — whet
his appetite for more.

"WTiether this was so or not it seems to me that, at the end of
this thirt>' years. Reader’s Digest might well claim that for every
reader film and radio and television have killed or merely
ansesthetised, it has created or kept alive another. The century

IX

FOREWORD

El

see beyond the stars we don’t see* a pattern of universes upon
unh erses upon umverses for which ^^lss Gertrude Stein’s drag-
ging repetitions of phrase seem almost the only possible kind of
description to use In particular it speaks of a star called Alpha
Hercults - a body ‘so fantastically huge that if it were m the
position of our sun it would engulf the sun and extend beyond
the orbit of Mars'’

Those readers i\ho, like me, grow occasionally tired of new
media of illiteracy, new demonstrations of atomic power and in
particular of that speaous catch-phrase of our time, ‘the end of
cmlisation as i\e know it’, mil find, I think, a good deal of
satisfaction in these pieces, both an expression of the Digest
philosophy. They will like in particular the characters that
appear towards the end of the Krakatoa stoiy*, most especially
the Spider, To the Krakatoa story the Spider is as the dove w'as
to the story of the Ark I will not spoil the reader’s pleasure by
anticipating or by sa^nng why or how. I wtU simply say: ponder
the spider. The entrance of that tiny creature mto the world of
Krakatoa seems to me as historically, emotionally and spiritually
dramatic as almost an) thing I ever read. INTien you have read
it you will get, I think, a clearer perspective on httle things like
Bikini, on great things like Alpha Hercuhs and on altogether
unpredictable things like spiders and ourselves.

For the rest, you wtU find something of everything here,
including Mr hlencken The piece by Mr Mencken is the
exception to Readers Digest’s fairly general rule that it does
not pnnt fiction, except those everyday pieces of fiction
like It Happened on the Subvuay, w'hich appear in reality to be
modern miracles of fantasy. Mr Mencken came from Baltimore,
which IS perhaps why his piece on the relative virility of
Amencan and British English is such a picturesque lie. Many
readers - especially English readers - may like to amuse them-
selves bv blowing a counterblast at Mr Mencken, beginning
with a selection on the American side of a few w’ords hke
elevator, mortician and transportation, and on the English side
lift, undertaker and carry, together with a few good robust
old-fashioned and new-fashioned ones like soodle and slommack
and horse-face and whittle-bntches and you’ve had it and spiv. \\Tio
ever heard of anti-bounce clif^ Only, I assure you, Mr Mencken.

Volcanoes, stars, miracles, invasions, disasters, murders, acts

XU

FOREWORD

of God, adventures, heroics, im-heroics, men, spiders and
Mr Mencken - there is probably not a facet of man and his
extraordinary behaviour that has not at one time or another
been discovered by iht Reader's Digest microscope and magnified,
to the pleasure of infinite numbers of readers, in ite o\vn
particular, selective way. This, on second thoughts, simply
cannot be true. If it were. Reader’s Digest would fold up its
shutters tomorrow and the new forces of illiteracy, armoured
with plastic and chromium, might have advanced another step
or two.

I do not think this is likely to happen : which is why I suggested,
previously, that you should ponder the spider. For it is my
impression that the spider is the most interesting character in
this anthology, and that its editors, like myself, cherish a
considerable faith in that creature.

H.E. BATES

OUR FOUR MONTHS
ON AN OCEAN RAFT

Condensed from dispatches to Pforth American Kewspaper Alliance
THOR HEYERDAHL

Last Apnl five other young Scandina\T.an scientists and I
stepped aboard a 45-foot balsa-wood raft at Callao, Peru, and
set forth, at the mercy of ^\'ind and current, on a drffting trans-
pacific journey that was to consume four months and cover
more than 4,300 miles. Our destination was the Tuamotu
Archipelago of the Polynesian Islands. Our objective: to prove
my theory that Polynesia was settled 1,500 years ago by seafarers
from Peru.

Many scholars have pointed out remarkable parallels be-
tween early Peru and the Pacific island world. The sweet
potato and the calabash were important cultivated plants m
both places when the first Europeans arrived. Neither can
generate across the ocean ivithout the aid of man. The PoljTiesian
name for sweet potato was ‘kumara’, and ‘kumara’ also was its
ancient name among the aborigines of Peru, where botanists
state the sweet potato originated.

The local tongues in both areas have various other words in
common. The sacred leader of the pre-Incan Peruvians w'as
Kon-Tiki, the god of creation. Among Marquesa Polynesians,
too, Tiki is the pnnapal legendary progenitor.

Yet one school of ethnologists has contended there could have
been no contact because no craft the Peruvian aborigines

in *Tht DtgesC «n 1947

2

reader’s JJIGEST OMNIBUS

possessed was capable of crossing the Pacific. Their only boats
were balsa rafts and small boats consisting of bundles of reeds
lashed together. The latter were the same as the mokihi reed
boat of the Maori-Polynesians.

To test the feasibility of such a voyage, we built and equipped
a raft as nearly as possible the way the ancients must have done.
Peruvian fishermen still build such rafts on a smaller scale. Ours,
which we christened Kon-Ttki, measured 45 by 18 feet. Nine
great balsa logs, averaging two feet in diameter, were lashed
together, arranged like organ pipes, the longest in the middle,
so as to give the raft a bow. Nme smaller logs were placed on
top as crossbeams. Between these we stowed our provisions, and
covered them with a deck of split bamboo. Amidships we built
a bamboo hut, eight by 15 feet, to protect the radio equip-
ment, delicate meteorological and hydrographic instruments
and personal belongings. In front of the hut we rigged a
rectangular sail, 21 by 16 feet. In the stem was a long
steering oar.

Besides myself, the crew included Herman Watzinger, 31, a
mechanical engineer in charge of meteorological and hydro-
graphic observations; Erik Hesselberg, 33, our navigator and
photographer; Bengt Danielsson, 27, in charge of all plans
concerning food and water; Torstein Raaby, 29, and Knut
Haugland, 30, both radio operators.

On 28 Apnl we were towed out of Callao harbour by a
Peruvian navy tug and set adrift. As we cast loose, we hoisted
our sail bearing the painted head of Kon-Tiki.

{From this point on, the expedition’s actimties are recorded in the
following radio dispatches, picked up by amateur operators and related
to the North American Newspaper Alliance.'^

May 13. We have been adrift for two weeks and have been
carried over 500 miles by wnds and the Humboldt Current. A
heavy storm came up soon after the Andean range dropped
below the horizon. For five days and nights we struggled at the
big steenng oar to keep the raft’s stem to the wind. Two men
were necessary to handle the huge sweep. But the raft proved
amazingly buoyant and swiftly climbed to the top of the most
menacing rollers. The central portion was dry at all times. Life
is comfortable inside our airy bamboo hut. "We pass the time
reading and studying.

OUR FOUR MONTHS ON AN OCEAN RAFT 3

The amount of fish life around us is amazing. It is like
sailing over an aquarium. Flying fish, attracted by our gas
lamp at night, fly right into the hut By using them for bait
we can catch more fish in five minutes than we can eat in
two days.

On 6 May a huge whale headed directly at us, snorting like a

galloping horse. He approached mthm six feet of us before he
dived, slid under the raft, and then lay immobile. We ivatched
In'! shiny black body hover under us, then saw it slowly sink
deeper and deeper into the sea

On 10 May "^Vatzinger dived under the raft to fix one of our
four centre-boards. After his dive he sat on the edge of the raft,
dangling his feet in the water Suddenly we saw a brown shark
gliding rapidly for him Heyerdahl heaved a harpoon into its
back. A desperate fight ensued, during i\hich another harpoon
was bent useless upon striking the shark’s head. The thrashing
shark finally whipped around, snapped through the line,
and swam away ivith the harpoon still sticking out of its
back

Herman has decided to let the centre-board repairs go.

4 reader’s digest omnibus

May 27. We have now spent one month on the raft and have
covered 1,100 miles. No ships since our first night off Peru.
The raft is in perfect condition. The -vvind has blown always
south-east, and its push on our sail, plus the drag of our
oar lashed behind, keeps the course steady without effort on
our part.

The ancient Peruvians knew what they were doing when
they built a raised bamboo deck amidships. Even average seas
wash constantly over the main logs. But they never run higher
than about a foot above the raft. Bow and stem waves break
with great force but disappear quickly betiveen the open main
logs. If there are sharks around to prevent a dip in the ocean,
the bow becomes a perfect bathtub in the hot sun.

The logs now are covered entirely by finnges of green seaweed
and clusters of red and blue shells. On calm days we see small
crabs drifting past us, riding on floating feathers of sea birds.
Seeing the raft, the crabs rush over to hide in the seaweed
and feed on the shells.

Tiny fish hide between the logs, and they attract quantities
of larger fish. A toothbrush dipped in the sea will bring big
dolphins rushing out from under the raft to investigate.

^une 6. On a cloudy night the phosphorescence of the w'atcr
makes all fish near the surface look luminous. Last night three
huge mammals moved up to the raft in pitch darkness. Vague,
glowing shapes, 20 feet long, they drifted astern like fluttering
ghosts.

June 7. Knut Haugland was squatting aft washing some
clothes. He suddenly looked into the face of a huge monster.
It had a head so incredibly great and so stupidly ugly - the
ffog-like mouth was four feet wide — that Knut cried out from
sheer horror.

The monster’s body w'as brown, spotted with white dots. The
huge head, %vith tiny eyes, converged backwards to a narrow
tail that was fully 25 feet away. The tail had fins emerging from
the surface of the sea, and a large dorsal fin ran along its back -
which was six feet wde.

{The monster was a whale shark, one of the largest and ugliest of
all sea creatures.)

1 Ve lashed 40 pounds of dolphin meat to our six largest hooks
and attached this to a steel and heavy rope line. The monster

OUR FOUR MONTHS ON AN OCEAN RAFT 5

lazily approached the bait like an old submarine, and followed
us, half curious and half indifferent, for half an hour. Fmally its
head touched the stem log where Hesselberg stood ready inth
a heavy harpoon. He thrust it down wth all his strength deep
into the creature’s neck

Further developments are hard to recollect. The monster
seemed to become an enormous, lashingmachmeofmdestructible
steel. Giant fountains of water sprayed into the air. I caught a
bnef glimpse of Haugland and Raaby clinging to each other
i\hile upside doivn in mid-arr. WTien the commotion died doivn
the broken wooden shaft of the harpoon floated to the surface,
200 yards away. The monster was gone.

June 25. Now, farther from land than we shall be at any
point on our tnp, we have come to feel at home on our raft.
Occasionally, on moonlight mghts, two or three of us drift ofifm
our rubber ^nghy to look at the raft from a distance. As it
floats along ivith one lamp astern, its thatched jungle hut and
the huge sail rising from &e sea, the craft looks like something
from a fairy tale. Then the ocean rises up between the dinghy
and the raft, and the sea is wide and lonely. We always hurry
back then, and once aboard agam we feel that the raft is the
only safe, solid place in the whole world.

Inside the cosy shack, this feeling of security is particularly
strong. The green leaves and banana fronds above yellow
' bamboo walls have the most amazing psychological effect on
us. It is as if we were crawhng from the sea far inland, to a
typical dwelling in the jungle. The noise of the ocean seems
weirdly out of place.

During the daytime Herman Watzinger tests neiv ty^pes of
emergency and rescue equipment and sends meteorological
observations by radio twice a day. Elnut Haugland and Torstein
balance atop the mast, trying new types of directive antenns.
^Vith six transmitters they contact all parts of the Umted States,
Canada, Panama, Peru, Austraha, New Zealand and Hawaii.

July g. After 75 days at sea our raft has now drifted 3,400
nautical miles westward from Peru. We have only 488 miles to
go before reaching our first possible landfall in the Marquesas.
Though it is too early to draw final conclusions from our
experiences, we have made some interesting observations.

A premeditated voyage by prehistoric Peruvians would allow

6

reader’s digest omnibus

them to carry sufficient sweet potatoes and dried food to take
them to 'Polynesia. We have potatoes, gourds and coconuts
exposed to weather in Peruvian baskets on the foredeck.

We have encountered several severe storms, and had a few
anxious moments, but our balsa raft has proved seaworthy. It is
known that early South American craftsmen carried their water
supply in bamboo canes wth the little hole in the end plugged
up. Although our main water supply was in five-gallon tins, we
have such canes on board. Thirty fit easily^side by side under
the plaited bamboo deck. There the shade and constant over-
wash keep them at exact sea temperature. The water supply
could also be renewed from rainwater gathered at sea.

A prehistoric balsa raft venturing too far from shore during
an ocean fishing expedition would have been trapped by the
constant offshore wnd and the Humboldt Current and would
inevitably have started its helpless voyage in the same semi-
circle we follow. Any starvation among these prehistoric fisher-
men seems incredible, as fl^nng fish land on our raft every night
and edible crabs can be picked off the logs.

July 15. In the ten weeks that we have drifted 3,478 miles,
we have conducted numerous experiments for the British and
American governments. One of the most interesting of these is
to find out the nutritive qualities of plankton.

Plankton is a collective name for the myriad tiny living
creatures which inhabit the ocean. Some are visible to the naked
eye but others must be studied through a microscope. All fish
feed on plankton or on smaller fish which cat plankton.

At the suggestion of Dr Alexander Bajkov, formerly of the
U.S. Army Air Forces Aero-Mcdical Laboratory, we brought
ivith us a special cone-shaped silk net with nearly 3,000 meshes
per square inch. Our best daily catches contain from five to ten
pounds of tiny shrimp-like copepods, miniature pelagic crabs
and other crustaceans as well as eggs and larvse. If the catch is
mostly made up of copepods, the plankton tastes like shrimp
paste- If the net yields mostly eggs, the plankton tastes like
caviar or oj'stcrs. Four members of our expedition have found
plankton a great delicacy. The others do not like any sea-food.

"We have found that a freshwater supply can be considerably
eked out by adding scaw'atcr. On hot days with the body using
more salt than it usually does, we have added up to 40 per cent

OUR FOUR MONTHS ON AN OCEAN RAFT 7

seawater to our drinking water and have found the hquid
thirst-quenching and not uncomfortable.

^Ve feel that these t^vo tests, while not conclusive, indicate a
much greater chance for sumval among shipweck \'ictims.
Any stranded group, if equipped with a plankton net and a tiny
seawater evaporator - whose output can be extended by addmg
a small quantity of seawater - can prolong hfe.

July 30. At daivTi today we sighted land. It was the island of
Fukapuka, one of the easternmost atolls of the Tuamotu group.

Strong side ivmds were dmang us at right angles to the
island. ^Ve couldn’t turn the raft into the tvind but sailed some
seven miles south of the island.

■\Ve are keeping a constant look-out for land which can arrest
the Kon-Tikt's ivestward drift. Meanwhile, six coconuts are now
sprouting green leaves, a calabash and our last potato are
waiting to be planted on the soil of Pol>Tiesia as the followers of
Tiki planted the remainder of their supphes about the year 400.

August 3. Early this mormng the long, low island of Amgatu
emerged on the western honzon Just before sunset w’e reached
the island’s south coast and discovered a native village set amid
towering trees. The beach was soon full of Polynesians w'ho
stared in amazement. We saw them launch a canoe and watched
as it came through a narrow opening m the coral reef.

Two Polynesians came aboard, embraced us all and wished
us a hearty welcome in their native tongue. These were the
first people we had seen in 97 days and 4,100 miles of drifting.

A fresh offshore breeze came up, and we took our sail doivn.
Then the six of us piled into the canoe and paddled into shallower
water, looking for an anchorage The wind increased. More
canoes came out as the natives tried to stop our drift. We fought
the rising wind for three hours, but it was useless

We had to terminate the merry party and send our fine
Polynesian friends ashore. \Mien they got there they ht huge
bonfires on their highest hills to gmde us westwards as we raised
our sail.

August 7. The Kon-Tiki is on Raroia Reef, Tuamotu Archi-
pelago, the crew safe. This marks the conclusion - and, as such,
the success - of our expedition.

After three days of trying to get round long, low Raroia Reef,
we were finally drawn in among the coral rocks. The whole

8

reader’s digest omnibus

horizon ahead of us, from end to end, was covered with an
unbroken line of breakers and reefs.

As we drew close to the breakers, all hands were briefed on
landing procedure. Only after the raft had washed through the
heaviest surf- and into the minor breakers beyond the first
line — should anyone think of leaving. We secured our important
documents in a waterproof lashing and closed down the radio.

Suddenly the raft was lifted high in the air, then dropped into
a hollow between big waves. Everyone headed for the high
spots: Haugland, Danielsson and Watzinger held to the roof of
the bamboo hut, Raaby climbed the sail block and I went up
the mast. We had no sooner got there than a great wall of
water hit us. The men below me later reported that the water
towered 15 feet over my head -and I was atop the mast-
before it engulfed the raft.

Then there was a big crash. We had struck the reef. A giant
comber threw us into the calmer water beyond. Succeeding wash
from spent breakers pushed us slowly over the hard coral bottom.

lATien we were 600 yards from the beach we waded along the
reef and carried our gear ashore. Small four-foot sharks left us
alone, but eight large, poisonous eels attacked Hesselberg and
Watzinger. The men repelled them with a machete.

August 12. Our little, low island, 150 yards in diameter, is
inhabited only by hermit crabs, lizards and sea birds. The
island is covered •with coconut palms and pleasant shrubs and
surrounded by a yellow coral beach. Our water supply is
diminishing, but there is rain every night and an unlimited
supply of coconut milk. Many varieties of fish and sea-food are
easily caught on the reef and our sail provides shelter between
palms.

August 18. Our expedition has been found by Polynesians,
who have moved us in their canoes to an island containing 120
hospitable natives.

A high tide and strong seas have washed the raft over the reef
and into the lagoon. We have spheed the mast and plan to sail
the raft here to the native village.

As I ^vrite this, word comes that a small French naval craft,
the Tamara, is coming into sight. This is the ship sent by the
Governor-General of French Oceania to take us to Tahiti.

August 20. The name ‘Varoa Tikaroe’ was given to me last

MY EYES HAVE A COLD NOSE 9

night by the Polynesian natives in a special ceremony. They
have given us all names of men who, in their legends, were the
first to come here. These navigators were descendants of Maui
Tiki Tiki who came to their island from ‘The Land where the
Sun Rose in the Mormng.’

The Tamara journeyed across the lagoon and took the Kon-
Tikt raft in tow, bringing it here to the village Tomorrow, the
Tamara, inth the six of us aboard and the raft in tow, isiU leave
for Tahiti - the first stage of our long tnp back to Norway.

‘IMS'

MY EYES HAVE A GOLD NOSE

Condensed from SuTvq> Mtdmonthly
HECTOR GHEVIGNY

I MET my eyes some weeks ago. We were formally introduced
‘at the Seemg Eye establishment m Momstoivn, New Jersey, to
which I had just come for the month of traimng in the use of a
guide dog. My eyes acknowledged the introduction with the
kind of snort made only by a fiiendly male boxer and the touch
of a very cold and very broad nose. "WTien told that his name
was ‘‘Wizard’, I said, not too cleverly, ‘I hope it fits.’

Four months before, my vision was as good as anyone’s. Then
suddenly my refanas began to detach from their proper position.
The surgeons did their best, but I was discharged after three
months as totally and permanently bhnd.

I had been a ifiicult patient. Yourfnends tell you, soothingly,
that everything is going to be all right, but you know that
everything isn’t gomg to be 2iU right if you don’t do somethmg
to make it so.

I was more fortunate than most in my predicament; I had
been a ivriter for 15 years, a profession that does not depend
absolutely on vision. I had lost neither my skill nor my know-
ledge. A good secretary could furnish the connection betiveen
these and the page. There remained the problem of mobility.
The greatest burden of the blind is often the complete dependence
for movement upon the goodwill of others,

First puilishei tn 'IT* Reaia’s DtgcsP m 1944

lo reader's digest omnibus

Therefore I needed no urging to consider getting a guide dog.
Before I left the Infirmary, my application had been entered at
Seeing Eye, Inc., and their representative had called on me.
But this does not imply that I was altogether easy in my mind
about the efficacy of the dog as the full answer to my problem.
It seemed incredible that anyone would dare try crossing, say,
Lexington Avenue in New York City at high noon with only a
small animal to guide him.

I was familiar enough ivith the story of Seeing Eye beginning
hardly two decades ago at Mrs Dorothy Eustis’ estate in Switzer-
land and with its i6 years of existence in the United States. I
was willing to grant that a dog was the nearest substitute for
sight. Trouble was, I had perhaps heard too much. Anything
having to do with dogs seems to invite the fabulous touch, and I
reserved judgment until the day my dog and I would try that
first crossing of Lexington Avenue. I had had dogs and loved
them, but even how to break one of chasing cars or teaching one
to do anything more useful than bringing home the paper had
been beyond me.

I needn’t have been so sceptical. Now, although Wizard has
his off days when he would rather take a bus than walk in the
ram, and so informs me by plain baulking, usually he takes me
wherever I want to go. I walk from my home to Fifth Avenue,
crossing Lexington, Park and Madison, as safely as I ever did
and twice as frequently. Because Wizard needs exercise, I get
out more often than I used to. Special legislation in New York
State permits us to go together on all transportation systems.
The public is stubbornly of the opinion that I am going to get
_ killed in revolving doors, and I always have to explain to
someone that I’m not.

We go to restaurants for lunch or dinner. When I am seated.
Wizard doivns obediently at my feet. Occasionally head waiters
are outraged at the very thought of a dog. At such times
“Wizard and I do not bother to explain that Seeing Eye has
taken special pains to show us how to behave at table; we don’t
argue because other restaurants arc glad to have us.

^Ve attract a great deal of attention, but AVizard and I are a
couple of hams and we love it. He weighs a little over 6o pounds,
has a sort of brindle coat — they tell me - and a euriously black,
wrinkled face. He has a habit of keeping his tongue lolled out

MY EYES HAVE A COED KOSE IT

and exposing his teeth in a way that quickly clears the path for
us. His ferocious appearance behes his character, though I
have never heard him bark He is asensitive creature, susceptible
to moods, and I have to be bright and cheerful with him, or he
gets worried about me. INTien he isn’t cheerful I worry about
him, so we are well matched They have an apt phrase at Seeing
Eye: the dog doesn’t belong to you, you belong to the dog.

The dogs are not only ‘trained’ to work for the blind, they
must be persuaded. And they have to be kept persuaded.

Snow lay on the ground the February day I enrolled with 15
other blind from all parts of the United States Two of them
were seniice men, four were women. Three were returning after
years for their second or third dogs. We were divided into two
groups, each wth its instructor.

I was taken upstairs to the comfortable room I would share
■with another, told where to hang my clothes, shown the bath-
room, the recreation room and the way to the dimng hall. After
that I was expected to find things for m^'self. If you lose a sock
or a shoe you can ask someone to help you find it, but you must
make you own search first. You butter your own bread, cut
your own meat; if you complain that you have never done these
things before, you are told it’s about time you started.

No one can give, a man independence, he must find it for
Mmself. This is part of the philosophy of Seemg Eye. Every
important member of the staff has spent at least one month
living the hfe of a blind person, his ■vision cut off by a close-
fitting black mask, until he, too, knows ivhat it is to be without
sight Sympathy, therefore, is not excluded but pity is.

We found this atmosphere curiously refreshing. The staff
treated us as complete equals, and it was a ivelcome relief after
the condolences of relatives and friends. I had thought the rule
a silly one that visitors could see us for only two hours on
Saturdays and Sundays I hadn’t counted on going mto retreat,
too. But the inept touch of the public, ivhich so often destroj-s
self-confidence, has to be excluded. For Seemg Eye trains not
only dogs but people.

The sum total of bad bodily habits brought by indhaduals to
Seeing Eye is often forbiddingly large. They are taught not
merely how to walk in confidence with the dog but to walk
freely, rapidly and with grace and strength. The student’s voice

12

reader’s digest omnibus

sometimes needs training, for it is the medium of communica-
tion between dog and master; habitual grufihess, too much
variation of mood expressed in tone, must be corrected.

My first day as a student I spent attending lectures by the
chief instructor, William Debetaz, who is the living link wth the
original work in Switzerland. The next day I met Wizard and
my seven classmates were assigned their own dogs. Four were
German shepherds, two were Labrador retrievers, and I had
one of two boxers.

We spent two days getting acquainted with our dogs. Our
reactions varied with our temperaments and experience. Four of
the students had never had do^ before and were unsure of them-
selves. The rest of us petted and praised om* dogs extravagantly.
Each man was sure he had the pick of the class.

Wizard and the other dogs had just gone through some three
months’ training wth our instructor. He had learned to walk in
the light harness wth the U-shaped handle, pause at kerbs, stop
for passing automobiles, and pay no attention to lamp-posts. He
had also conceived a passionate adoration for the instructor.

On the fourth day when we first tried walking with our dogs
in harness on the streets of Morristown, Wizard trotted beside
me amiably enough, responding to the ten words used in com-
mand. But it soon became apparent that he was co-operating
because ordered to do so by the instructor. As if I hadn’t enough
to do, it now da^vned on me that I also had to show this dog I
was the more desuable master. The fact that I fed and watered
him didn’t fool him a bit.

The instructor assured me that a definite day would come
when Wizard would show himself my dog. The instructor would
recognise that moment because Wizard would no longer be
doing by rote what he had been trained to do but would be
actively on guard for my safety, leading me round puddles,
keeping me from hitting lamp-posts and letter-boxes. This rap-
port between student and dog usually took about three weeks.
Sometimes it never takes place, and then the student has failed.

Life was strenuous at Seeing Eye. We got up at 5.45 to take
the dogs outdoors for kerbing. The hearty breakfast served at
seven was welcome. By eight we were on the streets practising,
our instructor taking us in pairs wth our dogs. Then lunch. "We
always took our dogs to table as part of their training. They

MY EYES HAVE A GOLD NOSE

13

were supposed to lie perfectly still. But with 16 dogs in one
duung hall, sudden eruptions were excitingly frequent At one,
we were back in the streets. Our day ended with the last visit
of the dogs outdoors at eight.

With all those dogs tethered to our beds, things happened at
night, too. A couple of them had the notion they were on some
kmd of guard duty and had to be cured of barking every time
anyone moved. The instructor got even less sleep than we did.
There was ahvays some student waking him because (a) the
bed chain had broken and his dog was nowhere to be found,
{b) his dog w’as on the bed and wouldn’t let him get back
into it, or (c) another job of housebreaking had to be done.

After spending a month at Seeing Eye, I can never subscribe
to the belief that dogs don’t think, if thought means the pow'er to
form judgments and retain memories Dogs can become aware
of responsibihty and reason ivdth this aw'areness as a basis

However, certain breeds, with the exception of rare indi-
viduals, can simply never be trained fiir Seemg Eye w'ork The
poodle IS one. He can be taught everythmg a gmde dog must
know except one thing; responsibihty for the master. Let him
bring his blmd master to the brink of, say, an open pavement
elevator, and he ivill not disobey the order to go fonvard, or
attempt to lead his meister around the danger. He ivill take the
order hterally and jump it.

Pure blood, incidentally, is not one of Seeing Eye’s norms;
many a dog ivith a questionable grandfather makes the grade.
InteUigence ranks high among the specifications, but, curiously,
some dogs have altogether too much intelligence. After a week
or two of training, such a dog evidently deades that this is too
much like work and spends more time devising ways of getting
out of his contract than of fulfilling it. The dogs w'ho achieve the
highest ratings are those who have intelligence tempered with a
dog’s version of social consciousness.

It has often been asked if Seemg Eye dogs actually realise
their masters cannot see. The staff w'ell knows that the dogs
recognise the blind. As they lie sprawied in the recreation room,
they don’t change position when a sighted person steps close to
them. But let a bhnd person approach and they pull their paws
to safety or silently find another spot.

^^^len "Wfizard made the discovery that I could not see, it

14 reader’s digest omnibus

meant he could play all kinds of tricks on me. He observed that I
did not know when I was at the end of a street until I touched
the kerb. So he would turn me neatly at a corner before taking
me to the kerb, thus deflecting me to the warmth of the bus
station, or towards the automobile in which we had come from
the school, thus saving himself further practice.

^Vizard’s tricks marked a crucial point in my own training.
Until now his attitude had been one of indifference. My class-
mates began having the same trouble, and we were disappointed
and gloomy. The instructor knew what was happening, how-
ever. The time had come to administer discipline. Until then,
we had not been allowed to use more than a mild, verbal
reproof, although we were expected to give loud and extrava-
gant praise when the dog did his job correctly. Now we were
taught the word w'hich is universally used in dog training as the
sign of disapproval - the German expression sharply

pronounced - and to give it authority by an expert tug on the
leash. This was not punishment. Dogs are never punished; they
are corrected. The correction must come instantly upon the
realisation by the master that the dog is doing something %vrong,
and when the dog resumes doing things the correct way the
praise must be unmistakable-

What makes the dog finally decide to assume full responsi-
bility seems to be beyond human understanding. He will go to
sleep under his master’s bed at Seeing Eye one night without it
and the next morning awaken tvith it. From that point on the
master is safe. He can cross any street or proceed up the most
crowded pavement with assurance. His period of traimng, except
for a few technical pointers, is over. He is ready to go home.

Graduation at Seeing Eye is casual. There are no diplomas.
We go to the Executive Offices to pay our bill, though. Now i\e
meet a last manifestation of Seeing Eye’s philosophy ofsympathy
without pity. Our dogs might as well be given to us for nothing,
the discrepancy is so great between \vhat they have cost and
what we will pay. The cost is six or seven times what we will be
charged, but we are told only the price to us: $150. The men
w’ho come for their second or third dogs pay $50. The cost to
seiv'iccmcn is $1.

AVuard is now- mv dog, or rather I am ^Vizard’s man, but I
can’t say I am any hero to him. He insists upon regular meal-

LONDON NOCTURNE

15

times, and when I stay overlong on visits he doesn’t hesitate to
let me know that we should be going "WTien my temper flares
he just sits on his broad bottom unDl it blo^\’S over. For some
unfathomable reason he loves bars and is not helping my
reputation by occasionally turning into one without an order
from me

The other day I was at an advertising agency discussing the
probabihty of doing a certain radio script which, as we say in
the business, was very commercial. ^V^zard lay quietly beside
me on the floor, as he had been trained to do, for as long as he
could, then got up, stretched, walked to a corner and un-
obtrusively threw up. His air indicated that although he was
responsible for me he didn’t have to like my matenal.

People still try to help us cross the street and we thank them
politely. But I don’t need their help any more. For ^Vlzard has
given me back the thing I value most - my independence.

The big burden of our hves is that everybody kind of expects
us to do tricks I am supposed to have learned something about
dog training Then why can’t I teach ^Vlzard to do things like
walking erect and shaking hands’ It’s a simple principle, I am
told; It rests upon the supenonty of the human mind over the
animal. I tried to apply that principle I didn’t succeed in
teaching "Wizard any tncks, but how would you like to see me
scratch my right ear with my left hind foot’

LONDON NOCTURNE

Condensed from The English-Speaking World
DON STANFORD

I’d had dinner ivith some English acquaintances, and shortly
before midnight I’d taken a taxi back to my hotel \\ hen I got
out I stood fumbling w'lth a handful of unfamiliar English
money, trying to compute the proper tip

The driver, a pleasant-looking old fellow with an intelligent
face and a quizzical eye, asked if I was an Amencan When I

Fira pubJuhei m ‘Tke Seaitfs Dtiesf «n 1951

l6 reader’s digest OMNIBDS

admitted I was, he asked me what I did for living. I told him
I was a %vriter. My cabby ivas interested: he wanted to know
what I thought of London.

I told him that I was delighted and fascinated with what I’d
seen, alAough that hadn’t included many of the things one is
supposed to see; but I’d poked around a good deal, and —

‘You see things, then,’ he said, and his face brightened. ‘You
don’t just look at ’em, to be able to say you’ve seen ’em. Have
you been to St. Paul’s, sir?! '

No, I said. I’d had only a few days to spend and I’d hoped to
find something more interesting than the things listed in a
guide-book. He,cut in on my explanation and said firmly, ‘Now
you just ’op back in the cab, sir, and let me take you around a
bit. There’s some things you’d ought to see.’

I hesitated. He saw my reluctance, and said in the same firm
but polite tone, ‘You’re not to look at the meter, sir. Please don’t
offer to pay me. There’s things you can’t pay for, as you well
know, sir.’

I ’opped back into his ancient and slightly sway-backcd cab
and off we ambled at a sedate 15 miles an hour. It was a clear
night and the moon was nearly full. I leaned forward in my seat
to hear the driver’s quiet comments.

‘Now ’op out, sir,’ he commanded every few minutes, climb-
ing down from his seat to come around and stand beside me as I
obediently ’opped out to look. I soon discovered that this was no
ordinary cab driver; this was an intensely interested authority
on London, an inexhaustible source of historical information.

We stood and we looked at St. Paul’s Ca'thedral, whose
majesty and grace rose miraculously from the surrounding acres
of rubble of bombed buildings. My cabby spoke of the cathedral
— wth reverence and affection and possessive pride - as ‘ she’.

‘All around her fell, sir,’ he said softly, ‘but there she stands.
Under her Dean’s aisle lies Sir Christopher Wren, who built her-
An artist, sir. His house stood just over there’ — the cabby
pointed across the rubble - ‘where he could open his eyes and
see her, first thing, every morning of his life.’

^Ve hopped out and stood on a bridge over the Thames, and
while the w'ater lapped gently against the side of a freighter
moored just below us my cabby pointed out the route over
which the \Vaterman’s Race had been rowed the w'eek before.

LONDON NOCTURNE

1/

and told the story of Doggett’s Ckjat and Badge for which the
watermen of London have been rowing their aimual race for
centuries.

We stopped the venerable taxi in Farnngdon Street and
strolled into Modem Court, a blank square opening off a
narrow alley, dark and deserted at three o’clock in the morning.

It seemed an undistinguished court walled m by ivarehouses
until the old cabby said softly, ‘Look over there at the Old
Bailey, sir. It’s a good quarter mile off. It does you queer, like.’

He pointed. I looked, and it did me queer, hke, too. For there
was no intenor and no roof to the blank warehouse at the end
of the court, and framed m exquisite perfection m one of its
empty third-storey lyrndows, hmned m moonlight, stood the
Statue of Justice, holding out her scales.

A few blocks away, across the rubble, my guide pointed to a
flimsy wooden sign . ‘Here stood the Liver^' Hall of the ^Vorship-
ful Company of Cordwainers, first mentioned in 1440. Destroyed
by enemy action in May, 1941.’

r8

reader’s digest omnibus

‘Five hundred years of history,’ my cabby said quietly. ‘^Vcll,
’op in, sir, and let’s be off.’

We ended up at 4.30 in Covent Garden, watching the market
come to life as the countryfolk amved wth their produce.

Under prodding, my cabby told me about himself. ‘London’s
my livelihood, sir. And my hobby and my love, you might say.
I’m 70, sir. I’ve read all I can, and I had to ride a bicycle a
thousand miles about the city before they’d let me take my cab
out.’

Then he said eagerly, ‘I’ve a friend, sir, a photographer. “We
take a day off, when we can afford it, and we take the cab -
the company gets five-eighths of what’s on the meter, and the
rest is my wages - and we ride about all day, or all night, and
we pay the five-eighths. We see a great deal, we do. It takes a
bit of the curse off driving tourists about - people that don’t
really see anything, or care, but want only to look and say
they’ve seen, when they get back home. I hke to pick someone
like yourself, once in a while, and show him. . . .*

London taxicabs are not expensive, and I don’t see how my
friend could have earned more than a week. The meter read
nearly ;i(^2 now, and if I gave him all I had I wouldn’t be paying
for what he’d given me.

I looked at him, and he smiled a little, and shook his head.
‘Remember what I told you, sir,’ he said, ‘and though what
you’re thinking does you credit, don’t be spoiling it, now. This
has done me good, too, and I’d like to keep the good of it.’

Some day I hope I’ll be able to do something that will please
him a little, in return for the four hours which moved me so
deeply. One thing especially that I’ll always remember is some-
thing the old man said as we stood on London Bridge, leaning
on the rail and gazing at the Thames below. He asked me what
New York was like and I tried my best to tell him. I described
the Hudson, so much bigger than the tiny Thames, and the
great clean sweep of the George ^Vashington Bridge; the soaring
height of Radio City; the sounds, smells and frenetic activity
of the city. When I had finished he was silent for a long moment,
tiy'ing to risualise the city he had never seen and never would
see, and weighing what he had heard against what he kneiv of
his own city.

Finally he said, very quietly, ‘New York, sir, must be a monu-

THE DAY WE FLEW THE KITES ig

ment to man’s ingenuity, indeed.’ He paused, and then added
softly, ‘But London’ - and there was quiet pride in his voice,
and satisfaction, and all the love he felt for his city and the
people who had built it - ‘London, sir, is a monument to Man.’

THE DAY WE FLEW THE KITES

Condensed from Parents' Magazine
FRANCES FOWLER

‘String I’ shouted Brother, bursting into the kitchen. ‘\Ve
need lots more string.’

It was Saturday. As alw avs, it v as a busy one, for ‘Six daj's
shall thou labour and do all thy work’ was taken seriously then.
Outside, Father and hlr Patrick next door were doing chores

Inside the tw'o houses, Mother and Mrs Patnek were engaged
in spring cleaning Such a windy March day was ideal for
‘turning out’ clothes-closets Already w’oollens flapped on back-
yard clothes-lines

Somehow the boys had slipped away to the back lot wth
their kites. Now, even at the risk of having Brother impounded
to beat carpets, they had sent him for more string. Apparently
there w’as no limit to the heights to which kites would soar
today.

My mother looked out of the window. The sky was piercingly
blue; the breeze fresh and exciting Up in all that blueness
sailed great puffy billows of clouds. It had been a long, hard
■winter, but today was spnng.

Mother looked at the sitting-room, its furniture disordered
for a Spartan sweeping. Again her eyes w'avered towards the
window. ‘Gome on, girls' Let’s take string to the bojs and W’atch
them fly the kites a imnute.’

On the W'ay we met hirs Patrick, laughing guiltily, escorted
by her girls.

There never was such a day for fl>ing kites' God doesn’t make
two such days in a century. ^Ve played all our fresh twine into

Ftra pulitsked in ReaJer*s DtgaT tn 1949

20 reader’s digest omnibus

the boys’ kites and still they soared. We could hardly distinguish
the tiny, orange-coloured specks. Now and then we slowly
reeled one in, finally bringing it dipping and tugging to earth,
for the sheer joy of sending it up again. WTiat a thrill to run
%vith them, to the right, to the left, and seeourpoor, earth-bound
movements reflected minutes later in the majestic sky-dance of
the kites! ^Ve wrote svishes on slips of paper and shppcd them
over the string. Slowly, irresistibly, they climbed up until they
reached the kites. Surely all such wishes would be granted!

Even our fathers dropped hoc and hammer and joined us.
Our mothers took their turn, laughing like schoolgirls. Their
hair blew out of their pompadours and curled loose about their
cheeks; their gingham aprons whipped about their legs. Mingled
with our fun was something akin to awe. The grown-ups were
really playing \vith us! Once I looked at Mother and thought
she looked actually pretty. And her over forty!

^Ve never knew where the hours went on that hill-top day.
There were no hours, just a golden, breezy Now. I think we
were all a little beyond ourselves. Parents forgot their duty and
their dignity; children forget their combativeness and small
spites. ‘Perhaps it’s like this in the Kingdom of Heaven,’ I
thought confusedly.

It was growing dark before, drunk \vith sun and air, we all
stumbled sleepily back to the houses. I suppose we had some
sort of supper. I suppose there must have been a surface tidyong-
up, for the house on Simday looked decorous enough.

The strange thing was, we didn’t mention that day afterwards.
I felt a little embarrassed. Surely none of the others had thrilled
to it as deeply as 1. 1 locked the memory up in that deepest part
of me where we keep ‘the things that cannot be and yet are’.

The years went on, then one day I was scurrying about my
o^vn kitchen in a city apartment, trying to get some work out
of the way while my three-year-old insistently cried her desire
to ‘go park and see ducks.’

‘I can't go!’ I said. ‘I have this and this to do, and when I’m
through rU be too tired to walk that far.’

My mother, who was visiting us, looked up from the peas she
was shelling. ‘It’s a wonderful day,* she ofiered, ‘really warm,
yet there’s a fine fresh breeze. It reminds me of that day we
flew' the kites.*

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA'S STUDENTS 21

I Stopped m my dash between stove and smk. The locked door
flew-^ open, and with it a gush of memories. I pulled off my apron
‘Come on,’ I told my httle girl ‘You re nght, it's too good a
day to miss ’

Another decade passed. We were m the aftermath of a great
war. All evemng we had been asking our returned soldier, the
young^t Patrick boy, about his experiences as a prisoner of war.
He had talked freely, but noiv for a long time he had been
silent. ^\Tiat was he thinking of- 1\ hat dark and dreadful thin gs^

‘Sayt’ A smile tivitched his hps. ‘Do you remember . . no, of
course you wouldn’t. It probably didn’t make the impression
on you it did on me.’

I hardly dared speak ‘Remember what?’

‘I used to think of that day a lot in PW camp, when things
w’eren’t too good. Do you remember the day we flew the kites’’

"Wmter came, and the sad duty of a call of condolence on
Mrs Patrick, recently widowed I dreaded the call. I couldn’t
imagme hoiv Mrs Patnck w’ould face life alone.

IVe talked a httle of my family and her grandchildren and the
changes in the town. Then she w^as silent, looking doivn at her
lap. I cleared my throat. Now I must say somethmg about her
loss, and she would begm to cry.

INTien she looked up, Mrs Patnck was smiling. ‘I w’as just
sittmg here thmkmg,’ she said. ‘Henry had such fun that day.
Frances, do you remember the day w'e flew the kites’’

AN OPEN LETTER TO
AMERICA’S STUDENTS

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

I RECEIVE many letters from young people. Mostly they ask a
question that could be put like this .

Shall I keep on WTtli school’ Or shall I plunge nght off mto
‘life’’

I try to answ'er these letters according to the circumstances

First puhlis>ed sn *Thc D j/sf in 194S

B

22

reader’s digest omnibus

of each case. But I sometimes feel that I would like to try to
write a general answer to the whole general problem of ‘school’
. versus ‘life’ in the minds of my correspondents. I think I would
say:

Dear Jack - or Margaret: You say you wonder if it is worth
while for you to go on \vith high school. You particularly
wonder if it is worth while to enter and finish college. The
tedium of study, nose buned in books, seems a waste of time
compared with a job and the stimulus of productive work. You
say you hate to bother me with this ‘trifling’ problem of
yours.

It is not a trifling problem at all. Your decision wll aficct
your whole life; similar decisions by millions of other young
Americans will zfTcct the total life of our country. And I know
how deeply it must worry you. It worried me and a lot of my
schoolmates when I was your age.

In a small Kansas town, 40 years ago, a reasonably strong
case could be put up in favour of leaving school early. Outside
those few who could afford to pick a profesion, most of us knew
our lives would be spent on the farm, or in one of the local
stores, or at the creamery or grain elevator.

We could be good farmers, good storekeepers, good mill
hands, without much book learning. The quickest road to
practical knowledge was to do. That w^as the way we might
have argued ; and we would have been nght if there were no
more to successful living than ploughing a straight furrow,
wrapping a neat package, keeping a machine well oiled.

Fortunately, we came of stock that set the school on the same
plane as the home and church. The value of education, above
and beyond the immediate return in dollars and cents, had
been bred into us. Our families stinted themselves to keep us in
school a while longer; and most of us worked, and w'orked hard,
to prolong that while.

Today the business of living is far more complex than it w'as
in my boyhood. No one of us can hope to comprehend all its
complexity in a lifetime of study. But each day profitably spent
in school will help you understand better your personal
relationship to country' and world. If your generation fails to
understand that the human individu^ is still the centre of

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA’S STUDENTS 23

the universe and is still the sole reason for the existence
of all man-made institutions, then complexity istU become
chaos.

Consequently, I feel firmly that you should continue your
schooling - if you can - right to the end of high school and right
to the end of college. You say you are ‘not too good at books’.

But from books - under the guidance of your teachers - you
can get a grasp on the thing that you most ought to understand
before you go to work.

It is expressed in a moiing letter I got the other day from a
young girl half-way through high school. She said that in her
studies she seemed to be a failure all along the line, alwavs
trailing everyone else. But then she ended by saying: ‘I still
think I could learn to be a good American.’

That’s the vital point. School, of course, should train you'in
the two great basic tools of the mind: the use of words and the
use of numbers. And school can properly' give you a start
tow’ards the special skills you may need in the trade or business
or profession you may plan to enter. But remember:

As soon as you enter it, you wtU be strongly tempted to fall
into the rut and routine of it You will be strongly tempted to
become just a part of an occupation which is just one part of
America. In school - from books - from teachers - from fellow
students - you can get a \’iew of the whole of Amenca, how it
started, how it grew, w’hat it is, what it means. Each day ivill

24 reader’s digest omnibus

add breadth to your view and a sharper comprehension of your
own role as an American.

I feel sure I am right when I tell you :

To develop fully your own character you must know your country's
character.

A plant partakes of the character of the soil in which it grows.
You are a plant that is conscious ^ that thinks. You must study your
soil - which is your country - in order that you may be able to
draw its strength up into your own strength.

It will pay you to do so. You will understand your owm
problems better and solve them more easily, if you have studied
America’s problems and done something towards their solution.

Never forget that self-interest and patriotism go together. You
have to look out for yourself) and you have to look out for your
country. Self-interest and patriotism, rightly considered, are
not contradictory ideas. They are partners.

The very earth of our country is gradually getting lost to us.
One-third of the fertile top layer of our soil has already been
washed away into rivers and the sea. This must be stopped, or
some day our country \vill be too barren to yield us a living.
That is one national problem crying for solution; it affects you
directly and decisively.

In our cities there are millions of people who have little
between them and hunger except a daily job, which they may
lose. They demand more ‘security’. If they feel too insecure,
their discontent might some day undermine joar security, no
matter how personally successfiil you might be in your oivn
working life. That’s another problem — and there are innumer-
able others - w'hose solution requires the thought and goodwill
of every American.

I cannot put it to you too strongly - or too often - that it is
to your practical advantage to learn America’s character and
problems, in the broadest possible way, and to help to bring
those problems to their solutions.

It is dangerous to assume that our countr>’’s welfare belongs
alone to that mysterious mechanism called ‘the government’.
Every time w'e ^low or force the government, because of our
own indi^idual or local failures, to take over a question that
properly belongs to us, by that much we surrender our indi-
vidual responsibility, and wth it a comparable amount of

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA’S STUDENTS 25

indi\Tdual freedom. But the very core of ^vhat we mean by
Americamsm is mdi\ddual liberty foimded on mdiMduzd
responsibility, equdity before the law, and a system of private
enterprise that aims at reward accord^g to merit.

These things are basic - your years in school ^vTll help you to
apply these truths to the busmess of livmg in a free democracy.

Yours IS a countcj-- of free men and women, where personal
liberty is cherished as a fundamental right But the price of its
contmued possession is untirmg alertness. Liberty is easily lost.
"Witness the history of the past 20 years. Even the natural
enthusiasm of warm youthful hearts for a leader can be a
menace to liberty.

It was movements of misguided young people, under the
influence of older and more cynical xmnds, that proinded the
physical force to make Mussolim the tyrant of Italy and Hitler
the tyrant of Germany. Mussolim’s street song was ‘Gionnezzfl* —
‘Youth’. Hitler based his power most firmly on the Hiller
Jugend - the Hitler Youth.

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man,
any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of Amenca. WTicn
America consists of one leader and 143,000,000 followers^ it uill
no longer be Amenca. Truly American leadership is not of any
one man. It is of multitudes of men — and ivomen.

The last war was not won by one man or a few men. It was
won by hundreds of thousands and milhons of men and women
of all ranks. Audacity, imtiative, the uiU to tr)' greatly and
stubbornly characterised them. Great numbers of them, if for
only a few nunutes in some desperate crisis of battle, were
leaders.

You uill find it so m the fields of peace. Amenca at uork is
not just a few ‘Great Men’ at tlie head of government, of
corporations, or of labour unions It is millions and millions of
men and women who on farms and in factories and in stores
and offices and homes are leadmg this country - and the world
- towards better and better ways of doing and of makmg things.
Amenca exceeds all other lands — by far - in the number of its
leaders Any needless concentration of power is a menace to
freedom.

"We have the isorld’s best machines, because we ourselves are
not machines ; because we have embraced the liberty of thinking

26 reader’s digest omnibus

for ourselves, of imagining for ourselves, and of acting for
ourselves out of our own enerpes and inspirations. Our true
strength is not in our machines, splendid as they are, but in the
inquisitive, inventive, indomitable souls of our people.

To be that kind of soul is open to every American boy
and girl; and it is the one kind of career that America cannot live
ivithout.

To be a good American - worthy of the heritage that is yours,
eager to pass it on enhanced and enriched - is a lifetime career,
stimulating, sometimes exhausting, always satisfying to those
who do their best.

Start on it now; take part in America’s affairs while you arc
still a student. There are responsibilities about your home, in
your neighbourhood, that you can assume. There are activities
about your school, or your campus, that %vill be more productive
of good by your contribution.

Don’t think that you are too young. ‘Let no man despise thy
youth,’ Paul the Apostle said to Timothy. These words apply to
you as an American. Loyalty to principle, readiness to give of
one’s talents to the common good, acceptance of responsibility ~
these are the measure of a good American, not his age in years.

Alexander Hamilton - General Washington’s aide in war.
President Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury in peace -
was speaking before applauding crowds of his fellow New
Yorkers on the political problems of the American Revolution
when he was only 17 years old and still a student in King’s
College, now Columbia University. The same stuff of which
Hamilton was made is in you and all American youth today.

But above all, while you arc still at school, try to Icam the
‘why’ of your country. We Americans know ‘how’ to produce
things faster and better - on the whole - than any other people.
But what will it profit us to produce things unless we know what
w'C are producing them for^ unless we know what purpose
animates Amenca?

To assure each citizen his inalienable right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness was the ‘why’ behind the establishment
of this Republic and is today the ‘why’ for its continued
existence. ^Vhat that means to you personally, what you must
do towards its fulfilment, cannot be answered completely in a
letter. But I repeat that the answer can be found in your school,

A STRING OF BLUE BEADS

27

if you seek it deliberately and conscientiously. You need neither
genius nor vast learning for its comprehension
To be a good Amencan is the most important job that will
ever confront you But essentially it is nothing more than being
a good member of your community, helping those who need
)Our help, striving for a sympathetic understanding of those
who oppose you, doing each new da) "s job a little better than
the previous day’s, placing the common good before personal
profit. The American Republic was bom to assure you the
dignity and nghts of a human indixidual If the dignitv and
rights of > our fellow men guide your daily conduct of life, you
iviU be a good Amencan.

A STRING OF BLUE BEADS

FULTON OURSLER

Pete Richards was the loneliest man in town on the day
Jean Grace opened his door. You may have seen something in
the newspapers about the incident at the time it happened,
although neither his name nor hers was pubhshed, nor i\as the
full story told as I tell it here.

Pete’s shop had come dowm to him from his grandfather. The
little front window’ w’cis strewn with a disarrav of old-fashioned
things* bracelets and lockets worn a ccntur\' ago, gold nngs and
silver boxes, images of jade and ivory . porcelain figurines

On this w'lnter’s afternoon a child was standing there, her
forehead against the glass, earnest and enormous e\ cs studying
each discarded treasure, as if she were looking for something
quite special. Finally she straightened up with a satisfied air
and entered the store.

The shadowy interior of Pete Richard’s establishment w as
even more cluttered than his show window ShcK es w ere stacked
with jewel caskets, duelling pistols, clocks and lamps, and the
floor was heaped with andirons and mandolins and things hard
to find a name for.

Behind the counter stood Pete himself, a man not more than

Ftrti pvUuikei tn "Tie JUadet s Dtstsi in 1951

28 reader’s digest omnibus

30, but wth hair already turning grey. There was a bleak air
about him as he looked at the small customer who flattened her
ungloved hands on the counter.

‘Mister,’ she began, ‘would you please let me look at that
string of blue beads in the wndow?’

Pete parted the draperies and lifted out a necklace. The
turquoise stones gleamed brightly against the pallor of his palm
as he spread the ornament before her.

‘They’re just perfect,’ said the child, entirely to herself. ‘^Vill
you wrap them up pretty for me, please^’

Pete studied her wth a stony air. ‘Are you buying these for
someone?’

‘They’re for my big sister. She takes care of me. You see, this
will be the first Christmas since Mother died I’ve been looking
for the most wonderful present for my sister.’

‘How much money do you have?’ asked Pete warily.

She had been busily untying the knots in a handkerchief and
now she poured out a handful of pennies on the counter.

‘I emptied my bank,’ she explained simply.

Pete ^chards looked at her thoughtfully. Then he carefully
drew back the necklace. The price tag was visible to him but
not to her. How could he tell her? The trusting look of her blue
eyes smote him like the pain of an old w^ound.

‘Just a minute,’ he said, and turned towards the back of the
store. Over his shoulder he called, ‘'What’s your name?’ He w^as
very busy about something.

‘Jean Grace.’

^^^len Pete returned to w'here Jean Grace waited, a package
lay in his hand, wrapped in scarlet paper and tied with a bow of
green ribbon. ‘There you are,’ he said shortly. ‘Don’t lose it on
the way home.’

She smiled happily at him over her shoulder as she ran out of
the door. Through the window he watched her go, while desola-
tion flooded his thoughts Something about Jean Grace and her
string of beads had stirred him to the depths of a griefthat would
not stay buried. The child’s hair w'as wheat yellow, her eyes sea
blue, and once upon a time, not long before, Pete had been
in love wth a girl with hair of that same yellow and with ey<^
just as blue. And the turquoise necklace w’as to have been
hers.

A STRING OF BLUE BEADS 20

But there had come a ramy night - a lorry skidding on a
slippery road - and the life was crushed out of his dream.

Since then Pete Richards had hved too much \nth his grief
in sohtude. He was pohtely attentive to customers, but ^ter
business hours his world seemed irrevocably empty. He was
trying to forget in a self-pitying haze that deepened day by day.

The blue eyes ofjean Gracejolted himinto acute remembrance
of what he had lost The pain of it made him recoil from the
exuberance of hohday shoppers. During the next ten days trade
was brisk; chattering women swarmed m, fingering trinkets,
trying to bargain. 'WTien the last customer had gone, late on
Christmas Eve, he sighed wth rehef. It was over for another
year But for Pete Richards the night was not qmte over.

The door opened and a young woman hurried in. AVith an
inexphcable start, he realised that she looked familiar, yet he
could not remember when or where he had seen her before.
Her hair was golden yellow and her large eyes were blue.
Without speaking, she drew from her purse a package loosely
umvrapped m its red paper, a bow of green nbbon with it.
Presently the string of blue beads lay gleammg again before him.

‘Did this come from your shop^’ she asked.

Pete raised his eyes to hers and answered softly, ‘Yes,
it did.’

‘Are the stones reaP’

‘Yes But not the finest quality.*

‘Can you remember who it ii-as you sold them to?’

‘She was a small girl. Her name was Jean. She bought them
for her older sister’s Christmas present.’

‘How much are they worth^’

‘The pncc,’ he told her solemnly, ‘is alwaj's a confidential
matter betiveen the seller and the customer.’

‘But Jean has never had more than a few pennies of spending
money. How could she pay for them?’

Pete was folding the gay paper back into its creases, rewappmg
the little package just as neatly as before.

‘She paid the biggest price anyone can ever pay,’ he said.
‘She gave all she had.’

There was a silence then that filled the little curio shop. In
' some far-away steeple, a bell began to nng. The soimd of the
distant chiming, the httlc package lying on the counter, the

30

reader’s digest omnibus

question in the eyes of the girl and the strange feeling of renews al
struggling unreasonably in the heart of the man, all had come
to be because of the love of a child.

‘But why did you do it?’

He held out the gift in his hand.

‘It’s already Christmas morning,’ he said. ‘And it’s my mis-
fortune that I have no one to give anything to. Will you let me
see you home and wish you a Merry Christmas at your
door?’

And so, to the sound of many bells and in the midst of happy
people, Pete Richards and a girl whose name he had yet to
learn walked out into the beginning of the great day that brings
hope into the world for us all.

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT

KATHARINE BRUSH

Driving alone on a holiday trip, a certain Mr AVintringer, of
Boston, was involved in a motor accident on a highway in
Illinois. He came to in a hospital in a small town where he
knew no one - or thought he knew no one.

An account of the accident appeared in the local paper the
following morning. That afternoon a Mrs Malcolm Convin,
whose name he didn’t recognise, called to see him.

‘Are you sure she asked for me?’ he said. ‘I don’t know a soul
around here.’ The hospital people were sure, and the visitor was
ushered in. The small boy with her was her son, Billy, she
announced with quiet pride. ‘I thought you’d like to see him,’
she said, ‘and the nurse said it would be all right.’

‘You remember me, don’t you?’ she added, anxiously. ‘I
remember you so well - I’ll never forget how wonderfully kind
you were to Malcolm and me, that night in New York during
the war. In the hotel, remember?’

It all came back to him then -very much to his relief,
because her thin, young, blue-eyed face had seemed familiar to
him only because it looked like so many thousand other faces.

Ftn* in The HeaJft s Zhseef tn 1951

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT 3I

He identified it now, however, pven the needed clues. The
overcrowded hotel, the young lieutenant in the waiting line
before the registration desk.

^Vlnt^nger had checked into the hotel in the late afternoon
and, because he often stayed there, had had no difficulty in
obtaining a room. After leaving his bag upstairs he returned to

the lobby to buy an afternoon paper and sat down on a lobby
couch to read it.

There was the usual war-time waiting line at the registration
desk. Glanang up from time to time, Wintringer found himself
becoming interested in the fortunes of the youngest of the
numerous Army officers in the line -a snub-nosed second
heutenant, looking about 19 years old, who kept meekly giving
up his place to superior officers

‘The poor kid,’ Wintnnger said to himself, ‘he’ll never get to
that desk ’ The kid finally did, however, and Wintringer heard
the clerk say that there wasn’t a room left. At this the youngster
seemed about to burst into tears. ‘Have a heart,’ he said to the
stony-faced room clerk, ‘I’ve been hunting a room since nine
o’clock this morning.’ But no, there still wasn’t anything. The
lieutenant turned away desolately

Wintringer couldn’t stand it He approached the heutenant,
said that he had a large room with twin beds, and asked if
the young man would like to bunk there. The heutenant said,
‘Thank you, sir, but my wife is with me.’ He gestured towards a

32 reader’s digest omnibus

nearby chair, where there sat a %visp of a girl, thin-faced and
blue-eyed, very wan, very crumpled, very tired.

Wintringer marched to the manager’s office and pleaded the
cause of this pathetic pair. ‘I know,’ the manager said, wearily.
‘We get ’em by the dozen these days. I’m sorry, Mr Wintringer,
but there just isn’t a room in the place.’

‘Then put a cot in my room,’ Wintringer said, ‘and they can
come in with me. You must have a spare cot around — and a
screen, to divide the room.’

The manager expressed horror at such an unorthodox idea -
it was against all rules, it couldn’t possibly be done. Eventually
Wintringer, a man of mature years and a sometimes choleric
temper, inquired at the top of his limgs whether all these protests
were being made on the grounds of morality ^ for heaven’s sake -
because if so, continued Wintringer, still belloiving mightily,
then this hotel was a whited sepulchre - and he could prove it,
and would be glad to. What he knew about THIS hotel - etc etc.

He made such a noise that the nerve-racked manager wanted
only to pacify him, at whatever cost. He said, suddenly, suavely,
‘Oh, but hfr Wintringer, you say the lady is your daughter?
(^Vintringer had said no such thing.) Oh, well, in that case we
can perhaps arrange it, as a very special favour. I’m so sorry
you didn’t mention that before.’

Things happened immediately. The lieutenant and his bnde
were shown upstairs to Wintringer’s room. There Wintringer
stood by until a cot and screen were set up. He then gave the
young couple a duplicate key and informed them that he was
going out to dinner and the theatre; that he would be gone
until after midnight, that he would slip in quietly and sleep on
the cot, behind the screen.

He followed this programme faithfully. It was well after
midnight when he returned and tiptoed quietly through the
darkened room to the cot.

\Mien he awoke in the morning the young lieutenant and his
wife were gone. They had obviously slept in only one of the
beds, though they had been careful to rumple the other a little
in a tactful sort of way. There was a note propped against a
pillow', thanking him very much, oh, rny much. He’d been so
w'ondcrfully kind. ...

And now here was the girl, se\ en years later, again expressing

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET 33

her gratitude, in the grey-walled hospital room in this strange
toiiTi. She had brought him a big bright sheaf of home-grown
flowers, which the little boy was clutching proudly. The boy
had browTi eyes and a snub nose and curly hair. ^Vintringer,
snuhng, said, ‘You look just like your father.’

‘Yes, doesn’t he^’ the girl said, pleased. ‘Everybody thinks so.’
‘How’ IS your husband, by the way’ I suppose I can’t call him

“the heutenant” now'adays. ’

He saw' the shine go out of her eyes, but her voice w'as steady,
as though w'ith long practice.

‘He didn’t get back,’ she said, simply. ‘He was killed in the
Hurtgen Forest. ThaFs another reason ivhy I’ll never forget
what you did for us. Never, as long as I live Because he was
shipping out then, you see. That was the last time I ever saw
him.’

THE

MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER

I’VE MET

JAMES SAXON CHILDERS

In my early teens I dreamed of going to Oxford University.
Then I w'on a Rhodes Scholarship and the dream came true.
But in my first hour at Oxford, as I stood in my chilly bleak
room, I ivished I’d never left Alabama. Everything w'as so
strange. The towers of Oxford, the poet’s ‘dreaming spires’, to
me were cold, grey stone against a dull grey sky. I was a
20-year-old American boy in a foreign land for the first time,
lonely, a little fhghtened and homesick.

The door of my room opened and a tall man, lean and sharp-
featured, stood in the entrance. He was perhaps 50 years old. I
noticed the perfect fit of his suit, the gold w'atch-chain across his
chest, his clipped moustache. I figured he was at least the dean.

‘I aim \Vyatt, sir,’ he said, staring fixedly at a point above my
head ‘I am your servant, sir.’ He pronounced it ‘sarvanF.

I managed tosay, ‘That’sfine,Wyatt. I’msurewe’llgetalong — ’

First pabJisKed tn *Tbe Readtr s Dtgesf in 1951

34 reader’s digest omnibus

‘Thank you, sir. And what will you have for luncheon, sir?’

I could think of nothing. Pretending not to see my confusion,
he suggested, ‘Most of the young gentlemen take commons, sir.’

‘Fine - I’ll have some commons.’ I had no idea what I w'as
getting.

‘Thank you, sir.’ A stiff bow and my ‘sarvant’ was gone.

My study was about 12 by 15 feet; it contained a table, tivo
chairs, a sofa, a fireplace, and a scuttle of coal on the hearth.
Two smaller rooms opened off. One had a dining-table, four
chairs and a sideboard; the other, an iron cot, beneath which
was a china chamber pot, and on the washstand stood a boi\l
and pitcher.

I went back into the study. It was damp, the stone walls
sweating in the foggy October air. Seven hundred years before,
it had been the cell of a Benedictine monk. All my dreams of
Oxford were now reduced to this barren cell.

Then Wyatt had come into the room, and into my life. The
tutors and the dons taught me the learning of the centuries.
Wyatt translated all this into the simpler language of daily
living and, while never preaching, hved a sermon for me to see.
He taught me, among other things, how shght is the gap
between servant and master.

Wyatt served two stairways - 12 of us ‘young gentlemen’. He
lighted the fires before we got up. He put our breakfasts on the
tables. If we were sleeping too late he banged the poker and
tongs until sleep was impossible. While w’e went to the showers
he cleaned our rooms.

Most Oxford men study in their rooms all morning and want
no interruption. At midday Wyatt brought our lunches, usually
commons — a crust of bread, a sliver of cheese and half a pint of
ale. Invariably he dawdled in clearing the luncheon dishes and
cloth, for he feared that his young gentlemen might remain
indoors. ‘In England, sir, one must exercise every afternoon -
the climate, you know.’ Regardless of cold, rain or fog, he
drove us from our rooms, sending us out for rowing, Rugby,
cricket or tennis. If we didn’t go out, \Vyatt kept coming in.
He had forgotten his duster. Was there enough coal? Anvlhing
to be such a nuisance that we’d get up and go out.

At seven o’clock, when the bell began its slow tolling and all
the black-clad dons and scholars marched into the great hall

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET 35

for dinner, Wyatt stood beside High Table and received the
tasselled hats of the dons, boivmg to each. He remained rigid
while the Latin prayers were spoken; then, with the other
ser\'ants, he began to pass the food and bnng the silver mugs of
beer and ale.

The Oxford plan of serving beer, ivines and whiskies to
students was stmtling to me. It is against University rules for
an undergraduate to enter a public bar, but most colleges sell
beer and liquor by the dnnk, bottle or barrel. Such a novel
arrangement led me one evening to show off before the English
students, to prove that Americans are of steady head and staunch
stomachs. I shoivcd off a bit too well.

Wyatt - who seemed alw'ays to know about everything - tip-
toed into my room the next morning, bearing a cup of tea He
dipped a towel in cold water and laid it on my forehead. I
mumbled that I was wretched and hombly ashamed. ‘It’s quite
all right, sir. Many a gentleman is drunk once in his life.’

I have never been drunk since.

At Oxford there are six-week vacations at Christmas and
Easter, and the three-months ‘long vac’ m summer Normally,
Amencan Rhodes Scholars wander over Europe. In my first
vacation I followed the custom and spent Christmas in Paris
I brought back a bottle of absinthe.

As Wyatt unpacked my bags he asked all about my tnp.
"When he came to the bottle of absinthe he said, ‘Asking your
pardon, sir, but isn’t absinthe a dangerous dnnk?’ I w'aved the
comment aside Hadn’t I sipped absinthe in a dozen little cafes
on the Left Bank? Wyatt bowxd and put the bottle on the shelf.
A few days later, while serving my lunch, he remarked that
Oscar Wilde had drunk himself to death on absinthe. ‘I under-
stand It’s habit-forming, sir.’ Again I paid no attention to him.

That affemoon I returned from playing Rugby football and
my dictionary was open on the table. Two books lay across the
page, covering all of it except the defimtion of absinthe ‘A
green alcoholic liquor containmg oils of wormwood and amse,
and other aromatics. Its continued use causes nervous derange-
ment.’ I laughed and tossed the dictionary aside.

Two days later my bottle of absinthe was ‘withdratm’. Wyatt
never mentioned it Nor did I.

As I grew to know Wyatt he permitted me an informality

3^ reader’s digest omnibus

which he denied his other charges. Perhaps it was because I,
an American, was more dependent on him. Setting up a playing
field on my study table, he explained cricket to me. He
demonstrated the correct procedure in presentmg myself to the
assembled dons.

We spent hours discussing Oxford, the traditions of England,
the ways of Americans. He asked about Alabama, and my
parents. He told me about himself. ‘Man and boy, sir, I have
been a college servant for 35 years.’ There was pride in his voice,
for to be associated with Oxford, in whatever way, is distinction.

Wyatt was without conceit, but he was vain about his dress.
His coat modelled his tall, slim body and his trousers were
sharply jSressed, breaking properly at the tum-up. His tie was
quiet and correct. He was far more scrupulous about my dress
than I was. Occasionally I would miss a shirt. Wyatt would
remark that the collar was worn, the cuffs frayed; he had
‘withdrawn’ it. He recommended his tailor to me, but returned
the first pair of plus fours I ordered. ‘They are unsatisfactory at
the knee, sir.’ Wyatt had them altered and I could tell no
difference.

I learned in a strange way of his disapproval of a pair of
gloves I had brought from America. Each Oxford college is
surrounded by thick stone walls about ten feet high, topped wth
spikes and broken bottles. Every undergraduate must be inside
lus college walls at midnight. Once I was caught out and,
assisted by a boost from a town policeman, climbed the wall.
One of my woollen gloves, violent yellow and red and green in
colour, caught on a spike and I had to leave it dangling -
evidence of my offence.

Next morning the glove was turned over to the dean, who
placed a notice on the bulletin board: ‘Some gentleman left
his glove on the spikes last evening. He may regain his property
by calling at the rooms of the dean.’ Wyatt saw the notice
before I did, told me about it, and added, ‘I have destroyed the
incriminating companion glove, sir. I did it with pleasure, for
it was a gaudy and unworthy garment.’

Wyatt was a snob about Cambridge University. Oxford was
tlie seat of learning, the home of gentlemen scholars, and - by
implication - the haven of superior servants. ‘Cambridge, sir, is
a boisterous place.’ He sent his owm son to Oxford.

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET 37

' ‘It might have been easier on my son to attend Cambridge,
but tlie idea is distasteful to me. They are a rowdy lot’

The only strain betiveen us was the fact that Wyatt would
never sit doivn in my room. Sometimes late at mght, when he
was long past duty hours and still Imgered to talk, I asked him
to sit by the fire ivith me. He always thanked me but remained
standing. Once when he was leavmg, on a cold night, I offered
him a dnnk He drew quickly erect and his stare reproved me.
Then, iwth a slow smile, ‘You Amencans never qmte leam,
do you sir?’ He bowed. *I would enjoy a dnnk, but it isn’t
done.’

Wyatt hved in a pretty brick house near the college. He had
a garden and every spnng mormng he came riding along on his
bicycle, smiling and speakmg to his fhends firom behind a big
bunch of flowers He fixed a bowl of poppies, swe'et peas or
roses m the room of each of his young gentlemen. Whenever I
had guests dunng the spring term my room was filled ivith
flowers. If I had tourist visitors from Amenca, Wyatt would
ransack all his students’ rooms and assemble all the best hnen
and silver for the occasion.

Wyatt was acclaimed by his fellow servants and the towns-
people of Oxford as a sportsman. He played for 13 years m the
University College Servante team. He was m the football team
which won the City Jumor League. He rowed for a roiving
club and was a member of a golf club. Yet for 35 years he came
to work at seven m the mormng, and his fined duty ended at
nine o’clock at night.

One spring I saw Wyatt play cricket for the Worcester
College Sen'ants against the servants of Christ Church College.
In this match I watched him approach a cncketer’s dream, the
scoring of 100 runs - ‘making his century’. Batting with sureness
and grace, he passed 75 Eighty-five Ninety. Ninety-five The
crowd grew tense and no one spoke. Ninety-mne. The bowler
threw - and the ball was a streak from IVyatt’s bat to the
boundary. He had done it

‘\Vcll played, Billy' \Vell done, Billy!’

I looked at the chcenng spectators, and at the tall man in
white flannels standing beside the wicket Billy! Had this man
another name beside Wyatl^ Had I hved with him these years
and knoivn only a part of him?

3^ Reader’s digest omnibus

"W illiam Claude ^Vyatt knew the works of Dickens and Scott;
somehow he had picked up a little Latin. ‘But the best reading,
sir, IS the Bible ’ He said to me one night, ‘Americans are
impatient. They arrne here talking of degrees and seeking an
itemised education. They want to know when classes meet.
AVhat text-books will they use.’ He shrugged. ‘^Ve have none of
that. Oxford, sir, is a w'ay of life. It docs not come from lectures
and formal study. It is absorbed until a man knows what is
good and true.’

One w'cek I was more interested in the Grand National race
than my books. I let my studies slide, and finally turned in an
essay on Oliver Goldsmith which was based more on bluff than
knowledge. My tutor listened, hidden as usual behind the
smoke of his pipe, and when I finished, said, ‘An interesting
essay, I declare, h'latter of fact, I have only one question
concerning it. Have you, at any lime in your life, read a single
line written by a man named Oliver Goldsmith?’

Back in my rooms, I was indignant. ^Vhen Wyatt came in I
told him what had happened. ‘He had his nerve! - asking if I’d
read a single line by Oliver Goldsmith.’

Wyatt’s face was chiselled from granite. ‘Have you, sir?’ he
said

As lime for my final examination drew near, Wyatt was
merciless. Each morning he cleared my breakfast dishes and
covered the tables wdih my books. If he found a novel beside
my reading chair, he returned it to the shelf. Whenever we were
alone he asked, ‘How are w’e doing, sir? Will we be ready?’

I have been dowm from Oxford many years. After I left I
often heard from Wyatt. Then one day a letter came. ‘Mrs.
■Wyatt is very well. My son, Cecil, is getting married in October.
He is now' in a firm of chartered accountants, but hopes some day
to set up lor himself. I am afraid I cannot tell you good news
about mycclf, as I am wailing to go into hospital. I don’t think
I can start the October term. Well, we all have our bothers.
Joy to all at your house and goodbye to you, sir. Yours
obediently — ’

A few’ days later I rccci\ed a clipping from the Oxford Times.
It was heaclcd. ‘Funeral of W. C. Wyatt.’ He w'as 6o w'hen he
died. I am sorry I never saw’ him after I was older. I would like
to have said: ‘Thank sir!’

‘WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO
TURN RESPECTABLE?’

j

THADDEUS ASHBY

On my \say back to college in 1945 I passed through the steel
distnct that stretches from South Chicago to Gary, Indiana, in
an unbroken forest of smokestacks, black nulls, gnmy tenements.

I thought the rain of soot and cinders out there looked hke hell
on earth. I felt sorry for the men who worked there.

A year later I had to leave Harvard for lack of money. I
needed a job in a hurry. I tried the usual white-collar employ-
ment sources - investment banking, advertising, journahsm -
but without success Finally the kindly personnel manager of a
large steel corporation had a suggestion. Why not go mto a
steel null?

I argued with myself. ‘You are cultured and sensitive,’ I said,
‘you weren’t intended to ivork with your hands ’ But I had to
eat. A week later I had taken a job as a sweeper for Repubhc
Steel Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio.

At 5 30 the first morning Mrs Kow'alski, my landlady,
prised my death gnp from the bed and faced me into the
sub-arctic wind towards the tram-hnes ‘I’ve changed my
mind,’ I said, turning back ‘I’ve decided to quit this job Let
me in.’

‘I w'on’t let you in,’ said Mrs Kow'alski. ‘You haven’t paid
your rent yet ’

The tram smelled of garlic and w'hisky. Some men carried .
whisky in their thermos bottles mixed with coffee, a practice
frowmed upon by safety officers in the nulls, but it seemed hke
an excellent idea at six o’clock on a January' morning.

Arriving at the mill, I w'as fitted ivith steel-toed safely shoes
and lectured on the Iife-c.\pcctancy of w'orkers w'ho disregard
the safety instructions A foreman said, ‘Sw'ccp this,’ and vaguely
indicated 15 or 20 acres of floor space That was my job for
several weeks. You never get it done, of course.

Fwa puihshed <n ‘The Reader^ DigesS' tn 1950

40 reader’s digest omnibus

I was in a place called the cold mill. Little by little, the
activity of the place caught my eye, and I began to ivatch, the
way city pedestrians watch the excavation for a new building.
Coils of hot-rolled steel, from 20 to 90 inches iride and several
hundred feet long, stood rolled up by the hundreds in roivs
called bays. One by one the coils are lifted from the bays by
magnets on overhead cranes, then unrolled as they are passed
cold through a set of steel rolls that temper the steel, make it
stronger and reduce it to the thinness required by the individual
customer. The polished steel rolls, two feet in diameter, are set
in stands 30 feet high; they look like giant washing-machine
wringers.

‘You wouldn’t think so,’ the foreman said to me one day, ‘but
every so often we lose track of a few hundred thousand pounds
of steel. The coils aren’t lost exactly, but we can’t find them
when we want them, and that holds up the order.’

‘^^^ly don’t you label the coils^’ I asked.

‘We do. We label them with chalk. But the magnets bang
them around so much they skin the numbers off.’

‘WTiy don’t you use a stencil and paint the numbers on?’ I
said.

The foreman looked at me. ‘You don’t talk like a sweeper,’ he
said, walking away. The next day I was moved out of his
department.

Mac, my new foreman, explained it. ‘Tom put you in for a
better job,’ he said. ‘"We’re going to make you stocker of the
fimshing mill. You’ll locate and hne up the steel in time for the
craneman to carry it to the temper pass rolls. You’ll have to
hustle to get the steel to the feed conveyor before Mike the roller
blows his whistle for more steel.’

I was only a file clerk, but I was filing steel, and if I didn’t
know the location of each coil before time came to roll it, I’d
hold up production on the null. I could sec the importance of
the job, and I was learning things not included in the curriculum
at Har\'ard. And I was making t%vice as much as I would have
been making at a w'hitc-collar beginner’s job.

So I walked through my end of the mill, writing down the
order number and location of cverj' coil of steel. You never saw
stuff so mixed up. I w'cnt to Pete the craneman. W'c would
relocate everything by sizes, I said, and when we got rolling he

‘when are you going to turn respectable?’ 41

would have to move only a few feet for each successive order
number. He looked at me oddly, but apparently decided to
humour me. By the time I ivent home that mght Pete and I had
laid out the mill the way I suggested.

Next morning Mrs Kow'akki said, ‘Worst blizzard in 25 years.
You better stay home.’

‘O K.,’ I said. Then I thought of the new system at the mill.
I walked three miles through the drifts.

It w'as interesting to see who had come. There was Pete the
craneman, Mac the foreman, Mike the roller and half his crew.

‘Today’s the boss’s birthday,’ Mike said. ‘IVe’rc going to
surprise him.’

‘How?’ I asked.

*IWre gomg to break the damn world’s record for rolling
cold steel.’

‘But we’re shorthanded,’ I objected.

42 reader’s digest omnibus

‘That don’t make no difference. ^Ve don’t need them other
goof-ofis.’

Mike handed me the rolling schedule. Some schedules skip
around, jumping from wide to narrow widths and back until
you lose a couple of hours out of your day changing rolls that
have been scratched by the rough edges of the narrow stuff.
This schedule had the wide stuff at the top^and not a drop of
two inches between any of the orders.

I showed Pete the steel I wanted first, and he laid his magnet
doivn on two four-ton coils at once and swning them into the
air - almost as tricky an operation as trying to suspend a foot-
ball with one hand. He laid them right in the mill instead of on
the conveyor - we didn’t have a man to run the conveyor. Mike,
an inspector, and I fed the steel into the rolls ourselves and W'e
were rolling.

By ten o’clock we thought we might break the record. Some
coils on my schedule w^erc missing, how ever; they’d been moved
by the nighishift. ^Vc had to have them in ten minutes. I found
them in an adjoining building. Pete and I rushed over, stole a
crane and loaded the coils on a flat-car. But there was no tractor
to get the car to our building.

‘We’ll fix that,’ said Pete. ‘I’ll let my magnet cable out all the
way, swing the magnet into the other mill and stick it on to that
flat.’

Since Pete couldn’t sec through the door of our building from
the height of his crane, I drew a chalk line on the mill floor and
directed his swing with gestures. He let the cable out, the
magnet flew through the door, followed the chalk line and hit
the flat-car with a crash Then Pete icclcd in his cable. The
operation w-as comparable to casting a fishline into the front
door of a house across the street and pulling out a baby’s pram
without spilling baby.

By 2.30 our tension w'as caught by men in other departments;
it W'as near quitting time, so thc> gathered round to w'atch. By
five minutes to three the record was broken. The inspector
w'alkcd to the side of the mill, wrote in chalk: ‘900,000 lbs.
Time: 7 hours 55 minutes.’

The men didn’t clap or cheer - they don’t operate that way.
But Mac the foreman and Mike the roller wore grins like neon
signs.

‘when are you going to turn respectable?’ 43

On the way home an old steelman asked me who rolled the
record

‘Mike Hanrahan,’ I said.

‘Hell, he couldn’t of done it without God Almighty for a
Stocker,’ he said. ‘IN'ho stocked the mill?*

‘I did,’ I said

The old man looked at me hard, nodded, and walked on. I
knew I’d never again have a compliment that would mean so
much, because it w as unintended

Some months later I got into conversation with an open-
hearth worker named Ste\ e ‘You ought to try the open hearth,’
he said. ‘Tapping a furnace makes cold-rolhng look like cutting
paper dolls.’

‘WTiat goes on in the open hearth?’ I asked.

‘IVell, that’s where steel is made. We take the molten iron
that’s been smelt’ down in the blast furnaces and pour it inta
the open hearth on top of cold steel scrap. \\ e add a httle lime-
stone, then cook her up for maybe 14 hours until the limestone
has brought the impunaes to the surface. The difference betw'een
iron and steel, ya see, is just that iron’s got more carbon and
siheon in it; bod out most of the carbon and silicon and ya’ve
got steel. But it takes a lot of heat, around 3,000 degrees, and a
lot of stirring and chemicals ISTien she’s done ya tap her out,
pour her into moulds, and let her cool. Then she’s ready to be
reheated and rolled out flat.’

"VMien he told me what the work paid, I made my decision.

My first day in the open hearth was bewildering The huge,
window'less, sheet-iron shed -high as a six-storey building -
stretched by the side of the nver for nearly a quarter of a mile.
Cranes rumbled about overhead, their movements punctuated
by shrill whistles; engines thundered past, drawing huge buckets
of iron; a terrible, bnlliant light poured out of Cyclops eyes in
the furnace doors I was told to buy a pair of purple glasses to
protect my eyes from the terrific light

To Morgan, the leather-faced melter who w'as to be my new
boss, Steve said, T brought a new man to learn yer job so’s you
can retire ’

Morgan glanced at me. ‘He don’t look like a steelman - more
like a shop assistant.’

‘Give him a easy job, you old goat.’

‘when are you going to turn respectable?’ 45

dolomite sail right into the steel - instead of against the back
wall, where it was needed Once I nearly lost my shovel and when
I drew it out of the door, the edges were white-hot and curlmg.

‘Never make steelman,’ Rudik said.

‘Damn employment office sending me shop assistants,’ said
Morgan.

‘Send’m back,’ advised Rudik.

I felt terrible.

That mght Steve took me out in my landlady’s backj'ard
where there w as a pile of gravelfor a new driveway. ‘Shovelhng’s
an art,’ Steve said ‘To correct yer aim ya gotta follow through
and watch where yer doloimte lands ’

‘Yes, but if I stop to w’atch it, my eyebrow's catch fire.’

“Ya don’t stop Ya dip yer shovel down low like this, brmg
her up under the door hke this, see, and throw yer arm over yer
face \Miile ya’re brmgin’ yer shovel back, keep her between
yer face and the heat like this, and watch w'here yer load hits.
It ain’t a matter of strength. Even you can do it.’

Ste\ e did it with the grace of a ballet dancer. I practised for
two hours. He corrected my swing with comments as tcchmcal
as a golf pro’s. The next day I shovelled as rehearsed, called my
shots and scored.

‘^\^ly you no show that yesterday?’ asked Rudik.

‘I was rusty,’ I said happily.

There was no lunch period m the nulls, we ate any time we
w'eren’t busy I felt that if I didn’t eat somethmg about once an
hour I ivould collapse from the heat. One big Pole, three times
my size, ate a third as much as I did

‘I w'atch you smce morning,’ he said to me one day. “You
come ivith lunch sack big as duffel-bag. Seven clock you eat ham
sandw'ich, two banana. Eight clock you eat pastrami sandwich,
two doughnuts. Nine clock piece cake, tangerine. Ten Steve
give you raw hamburger, you cook in furnace. Eat, eat, all the
time eatl Boy, where you put iff’

I got the idea about cookmg hamburgers from Rudik He
used to stand by the peephole, holding up his shovel to protect
his face from the heat, and study the working of the hot steel. I
did the same thing, to learn the •work of a first helper. Mean-
while, I would put a hamburger on my shovel, and the heat
would fiy it m about two minutes. Morgan saw me standing by

4® reader’s digest ohkibds

a furnace door one day, peering into the' heat with intense
concentration. ‘That’s a good boy,’ he said. *AVe might make a
steelman outa ya yet. Get over there and watch Steve tap
Number 13 because ya’ll have to do it yerselfsomc day.’

‘There ain’t nothin’ to it,’ said Steve. ‘The main thing is to
know when she’s ready to tap. Then run for the back of the
furnace and tap her quick to save the steel. We want to spill her
inta the ladle, not onta the floor.’

I watched Steve put on his wool coat, purple glasses and
helmet. A %vire screen, covered with wool except where a peep-
hole was left for his eyes, hung from his helmet. Then he put on
enormous wool gloves. I watched him approach the ugly red
tap-hole and its six-foot spout.

Imagine a wine barrel 20 feet high, one side half-buried in
the floor, the other side towering over a great pit. That’s an
open-hearth furnace. Imagine that you have to bum a hole
through the bung, so that the wine can flow through the spout
into a bucket about 12 feet high. Imagine that you are standing
on a platform by the side of a very hot spout, an oxygen lance
in your hand, burning away at the bung. Remember that the
wine IS not wine, but boiling steel. Ram your oxygen lance into
the bung until the yellow smoke blinds you. Keep on ramming
until sparks shower your helmet and you hear hot gargling in
the tap-hole throat. Follow your instincts: get away from the
hole. A river of fire, followed by 200 tons of steel, 3,000 degrees
Fahrenheit, is roaring out of the place where your head was.

Steve hit me on the head wi^ his glpves. ‘Remember the
rules and put on your hat,’ he yelled, ‘before your hair catches
fire!’

Tliat clinched it. ‘^Vhat’s good about this job?’ I asked. ‘Is
money that important?’

‘After ya do it once, you w'on’t have to ask.’

One day Steve came out of Morgan’s office lit up like Times
Square. ‘Old Rudik finally retired,’ he said. ‘They give me his
job on 14. Now I got a furnace of my own.’

I was happy about it, of course. It was what he wanted.

‘You’re my second helper,’ he said. ‘You got to tap out my
furnace.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, tiyang to make myself think I hadn’t
heard exactly what he said. ‘You want me to tap z.JuTnaceT

‘when are you going to turn respectable?* 47

‘Sure. You’ve watched me plenty of times. You take the job?
Yes or no?’

‘Well . . .’ I said hesitantly. Then bravado took over. ‘Sure,
I’ll take it.’

I put on my wool coat, purple glasses and helmet. My
stomach felt as if mercury were running around inside. As many
times as I had watched Steve tap a furnace, I couldn’t remember
anything. I was not only afraid of dumping Si 0,000 into the
pits; I was also doing considerable worrying about myself.

I rounded up the stock: 2,500 pounds of manganese to make
the steel tough, aluminium and silicon to act as agents in driving
out the oxygen and controlling grain size. Morgan the melter
was responsible for the accuracy of the chemical analysis. He
told Steve what to bring and I brought it. And I would have to
shovel it into the ladle.

Steve took a small spoon ivith a long handle, dipped it
through the open door of the furnace, let it become coated by
the floating slag, then plunged it deeper to bring out a spoonful
of molten steel. This he poured into a mould. He cooled it ivith
water, then hammered it until it broke. He could tell by the
markings of the fracture whether the steel was ready for tapping,
but had to get an O.K. from the laboratory.

‘Bum her out!’ yelled Steve when the O.K. came through.

I picked up an oxygen lance, a scraper, a spout shovel and a
third helper, a new man.

I hollered at the craneman until he brought a 200-ton ladle -
big enough to hold more than a hundred mashed-down Ford
cars, I thought to myself- and put it under 14’s spout. The
third helper brought me the tools I asked for. 'Ihe crew stood
behind me respectfully and did what I ordered It was my show
now. But it was just as well the crew couldn’t see the white face,
covered with cold sweat, inside my helmet.

I looked into the tap-hole and jabbed away ivith my scraper.
Then came the big moment. I set my teeth tight and rammed
the lance into the tap-hole.

The warning smoke curled up round me. I choked, but
rammed the lance home until sparks flew out of the tap-hole.
The heat warped the ivire screen in my helmet I continued to
ram. There was a loud whoosh, a skyrocket burst behind my
eyes, and I fell backwards, losing my lance in the white-hot

48

reader’s digest omnibus

deluge. Steve had pulled me away from the hole at the last
second. I, who had been scared to death, hadn t been scared
enough to risk doing the job half-way. I had been more con-
cerned with getting the steel out of the furnace than getUng
myselfaway from the steel. , t. ..

‘Damfool trick,’ muttered Steve, happily watching the h^t
flow. It was a good tap; it was flowing freely as Niagam. He
dug me in the ribs and pointed to the white glow, wapping the
mill in a cleansing, immaculate light.

‘It’s hell, ain’t it?’ he said.

Dante couldn’t have put it better. ^ •

I began shovelling the manganese, silicon and aluminium
into the ladle, and found I was shovelling '^^h a strange rehsh.
In a moment somebody was working wth me. IVhen we finished
I looked up to thank him. It was Morgan the mdter.

*I remember the tough time you had filling that manganese

bin,’ he said, spitting into the ladle. ,

‘You old mick,’ I said, ‘why don’t you let them pension you

‘I’m afraid you lousy shop assistants trill bum down the mill,

^'^Stevc^dTdid well together. We bought some boote on
combustion engineering and started to leam ^eltog. -
timers like Morgan could look at the heat and tcU by the
shading of colour how hot it was; we relied on a heat-measunng

instrument caUed a pryomctcr. We learned Sly

of the furnace from excessive gas-scorching, and the
figures showed that our production, minus dotvn Umc rep^,

Sint more money for us. We never lost a heat out of the
bottom as some did, and our furnace pioneered the use ol
oxvffcn for stirring* the steel and lowering the melting ttme.

Fwould go home at night too tired to wash, but I beg^
living for the eight hours at the mill, not the recreation ^ter-
wards. I felt superior to the rest of the people on the tram,
confident that none of them worked as hard or importantly as

^ One day I received a letter from a cousin still m college,
men areVo going to turn respectable?’ he wanted to kno% .

Christmas, me men

‘when are YOtJ GOING TO TURN RESPECTABLE?’ 49

were scheduled to work on Christmas, but most of them didn’t
show up. So Steve and I agreed to work a tnple turn, 24 con-
5ecuti\e hours, for time-and-a-half pay. Our furnace was the
only one that ran full blast round the clock, and we had a
production picmc. We wanted to stick the ojcj^gen pipes into the
hot steel so it would boil faster and be ready to tap out sooner.
But the ox)'gen supply turned out to be locked up tighter than
the Mint. So we got the idea of running plain air into the heat.
^Ve learned something. Ordinary compressed air, which is
cheaper, is just as good for stirring up steel as costly, pure oxj'gen.

We called up Morgan to tell him. He was so excited that he
left his family’s Christmas partj' and charged down to the nulls.
IVe were runmng way over capadty, splashmg the steel up
against the roof of the fomace as if there were an egg-beater m
it. Morgan let us risk the roof, and we turned up the air foil
blast. Normally you never got two heats a day out of a fomace;
w’e got three Six hundred tons a day out of one fomace instead
of 400. We ivere too excited to be tired or hungry. It was the
best Christmas Steve and I had ever known.

I stood on the platform watching my third heat for the day
flow out the spout. I kept mj’self aw-ake by thinking about my
pay. But there was something about this w'ork more important
than the money. And as I watched the colour of my w'ork light
up the mill the words gradually came to me that I put mto a
letter to my cousm

‘If I could convey to you the feeling I have m the mills I
could help you understand w'hy I’m staying here. I recommend
this sort of w'ork to you. There are thousands bemg tramed for
white-collar jobs that just don’t exist Competition for the good
jobs will squeeze a lot of college graduates out. Instead of stay-
ing on a white-collar job that pays a bare fomg for the rest of
your life, try the nulls, I say. Try them durmg summer vacation.
You’ll earn good pay and learn plenty. You nught decide to
stay on. You could be a first helper like my fiiend Steve. Or
you could go on up in management - most managers were mill
hands once. You w'anted to ^ow w'hen I w'ould leave the mills
and turn respectable I’m more respectable now’ than I ever
was But to understand that you’d have to stand on the platform
with me, w’atch the steel flow’ out of the furnace, and say to
yourself: I helped make that.’

THE INVASION
I. THE GREAT DECISION
Behind the Scenes with EisenJwwer

ALLAN A. MICHIE

Four years ago, before the last British soldier was taken off the
beach at Dunkirk, Prime Minister Churchill assigned a small
group of officers to the specific task of planning the return to
the Continent. Then and for a long time afterwards, it seemed a
mere academic exercise. But by the time of the Casablanca
Conference in early 1943 the project no longer looked fantastic
and the plans for D-Day filled four huge volmnes, each the size
of a New York telephone book.

The place where the invasion would strike tvas decided more
than a year ago. Roosevelt, ChtirchiU and the combined Chiefs
of Staff approved the decision in August 1943 at Quebec.

That it would start between the end of May and the middle
of June 1944 was decided at least eight mont^ in advance. In
November J943 at Teheran, President Roosevelt so informed
Marshal Stafin. The exact day was to be left to Eisenhower.
Marshal Stalin expressed his complete satisfaction.

When General Eisenhower arrived in London in January
1944, he checked over the forecasts of the men and equipment
he would expect, and on what dates. Satisfied, he set invasion
week to be between 3 and 10 June.

But the selection of the precise day was a last-minute
drama.

Four or five weeks before D-Day, shaef (Supreme Head-
quarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) depart^ from London
and moved into battle headquarters conveniently near the
loading ports and the ‘hards’ — stretches of English beach paved
with blocks on to which landing-craft come at high tide.

In a big, stodgy old house that had seen better days, standing
in a rolling, wooded private park wras the nerve centre of the
entire invasion operation.

Tvat-iJtitiitivi’Tkt Rtsia't Dvtter %nlM

50

THE INVASION

51

Vital pieces of information poured into this qmet woodland
hideout - photographs taken by suicide pilots above Normandy
beaches shoeing five main types of imnes and underwater
obstacles to impede our landings, photographs of vital bridges
and railway yards bombed to uselessness. The preparatory air
attacks began eight weeks before D-Day, and by 6 June, 82
strategic railway centres behind the Atlantic \Vall had been put
out of action and most rail and road bridges leading to the
Cherbourg peninsula were broken, forcing Germans to move up
supplies and reinforcements by long detours. The air policy was
to drop two bombs elsewhere, as on Pas de Calais, to one on the
real invasion objective, to divert German suspicion.

A few days before D-Day, the Channel clearing plan started
workmg. Allied destroyers and planes, with interlocking sweeps,
covered almost every square yard of the Enghsh Channel while
other forces bottled it up at both ends. U-boats were unable to
surface long enough in the area to charge battenes wthout
being detected. German E-boats and R-boats were driven back
to bases whose approaches were mined nightly by planes to
make impossible any sudden sortie against the invasion fleet.
Heavier ships of the Home Fleet cruised through the North
Sea approaches ready to intercept any bigger German warships.
Intelligence reports, corroborated by photographs, described
hidden big gun emplacements on the coast which had not
pre\dously been detected.

At the last nunute a German sergeant deserted his Fbhrer
and at pistol pomt forced French fishermen to take him across
to England He brought ivith him valuable details of the Atlantic
^Vall defences along the Normandy coast. But by that tune the
Atlantic Wall had few secrets from us.

The British had long ago issued an appeal for snapshots taken
in peace-time by tnpperson to the Contment. From the thousands
sent in, valuable details were ferreted out - a narrow lane not
shoivn on any maps that led up behind a chff on which the
Germans had installed a heavy gun battery, a back alley that
curves behind a tourist hotel which the Germans had made into
a strong-point.

As far back as 29 March troops began moving into staging
areas, then closer to embarkation ports, then finally to their
loading areas. Nearly 2,000 special troop trains were run to

5® reader’s digest omxibus

coastal ports. In the great control room an illuminated map
showed the progress of every convoy along the roads to the
ports. Meanwhile, in large areas of Britain, evacuated by
civilians, troops were training %vith live ammunition. Rommel’s
beach obstacles were duplicated and demolition squads practised
taking the sting out of them.

As a result of the Dieppe experience, special landing-craft
fitted with rocket batteries were developed to mow down Ger-
man beach obstructions. Tens of thousands of vehicles were
waterproofed for beach landings and equipped ivith flexible
tubing and steel chimneys that reared high above the engines
to suck down air to the motors as they plunged through surf up
to the drivers’ necks. Some 280 British factories were set \\ orking
day and night and the entire output of Britain’s sheet steel
rolling mills was taken over for this great job. The intricate
task of loading the invasion ships took two years of expert
planning.

The endless ammunition dumps built up along quiet English
lanes actually contained more ammunition than was used in all
of ^Vorld War I. Tanks were parked track to track, aircraft
stood wing-tip to iving-tip, miles-long convoys of trucks, bull-
dozers, amphibious craft and self-propelled guns were parked
in fields and at roadsides until Britons wondered if their little
island would sink under the weight.

Just 30 days before D-Day, the last full-scale invasion exercise
was completed. Tired Yaifics and Tommies who had partici-
pated in half a dozen such exercises complained that next time
they were called out they wanted to go straight into action.
Landing-craft crews who had frequently been sent out on feints
to deceive the enemy felt the same. They got their wish.

Seven days before D-Day, which was originally set for
Monday, 5 June, final loading-up began.

As the da>'s ticked off, the tension at shaef mounted higher
and higher, but at the personal headquarters of the commanders
there was an atmosphere of calm. Alonty left to subordinates
the detail w’ork, which he abhors, and read his favourite author,
Anthony Trollope.

Eisenhow'cr refused to move mto the big house but/-sct up
tent headquarters in the w'oods. He sleeps in what he calls his
‘circus waggon’, built on a 2|-ton army truck chassis — an idea

THE INVASION 53

borrowed from Monty. Its one room is littered ivith an odd
assortment of ^Viid \Vest yams and psychological novels.

On Fnday afternoon, 2 June, Prime Minister ChurchiU and
Field Marshal Smuts dropped into Eisenhower’s camp after
touring the coast to iratch loading operations on the ‘hard’.
The three men talked for an hour. Churchill suggested that he
should go along ivith the assault forces on D-Day.

General Eisenhower at first passed off the Prime hlmister’s
remark as a joke, but Churchill returned to the pomt and finally
Eisenhower said flatly that Churchill could not go. He reminded
the Prime Minister that if he were lost things would be dis-
organised in Britam and the whole mihtary operation would
be endangered. ‘Besides,’ continued Eisenhower, ‘the warship
you’d be on w ould require more protection than we can ordinarily
give it.’

In this vem, he was informed that Buckmgham Palace was
calling him on the telephone. It was the King, who had learned
of his chief minister’s purpose m visiting Eisenhower. Under no
circumstances, said the Kmg, was Mr ChurchiU to consider
gomg to France on D-Day.

ChurchiU acceded, in doivncast mood.

Saturday evening, 3 June, General Eisenhower held the first
of four conferences that were to determine D-Day, H-Hour. The
confreres were Monty, neatly dressed for a change, in a new
battledress just sent him from the Umted States; quiet, soft-
spoken Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower’s
b rillian t deputy; Alhed Naval Commander-in-Chie^ smaU,
peppery Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the man who had
h nlHant ly improvised the ‘Operation Dynamo’ that rescued the
troops from Dunkirk.

Last to arrive ivas Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-
MaUory, Commander of the Alhed Expeditionary air forces
He had flown doivn from London m his pnvate puddle-jumper
aircraft.

Outside in the fading half-light of an Enghsh summer day,
the weather appeared good to a la)Tnan’s eyes, but to the
weather experts at shaef the forecast was discouragmg. There
were three chief weather midivives assisting at the birth of the
great invasion - two British officers and an American air force
colonel. For weeks past they had been produang forecasts and

G

THE INVASION 55

come \vithm 12 hours. The other two weather men, separately
questioned, agreed

General Eisenhower summed up the position to his com-
manders Everything was ready. If they delayed much longer,
German reconnaissance aircraft were bound to find out the
extent of mass shipping and landing-craft assembled off the
ports. The Amencan assault force and the United States naval
task force were already under weigh, and the longer they stayed
at sea the more difficult it would be to keep the many landmg-
craft shepherded mto convoys. A few more days under German
observation and the mvasion lost its chance of tacticzil surprise.

The weather was a gamble. General Eisenhower admitted,
but it was up to himself and the high commanders to rise to it,
or turn away. They all knew what turning away imphed-
delay, perhaps of weeks, the mtricate loading process to be done
over agam, bad effect on the morale of troops.

Eisenhower turned to Admiral Ramsay and asked, ‘IMiat do
you think?’

Ramsay replied, T’d hke to hear the “Air” give his views ’

Air Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory spoke with dehberation
but left no doubt that ‘Air’ was ivilling to gamble on the weather
experts’ predictions

‘All nght,’ said Admiral Ramsay, ivith mock belhgerency, ‘if
the “Air” thinks he can do it, the Na\y certainly can ’

General Eisenhower smiled, but only bnefly. This was the
moment the peoples of the Allied Nations had sweated and
toiled for. Lookmg doivn the table at his commainders, his face
more serious than it ever has been or is likely to be agam, he
said quietly, ‘Okay, let ’er np.’

Those around the table rose quickly and hurried from the
room to set the operation in motion. Ike called after them, ‘Good
luck.’

He was last to emerge from the room. He was walking heavily,
and those who saw him remarked later that each of the eight
stars on his shoulders seemed to weigh a ton. He drove quickly
back*to his ‘circus waggon’ and turned in ivithout waking his
aides . . .

"With the mammoth operation at last under way, there was
no one more useless than the supreme commander. During the
long day before D-Day, General Eisenhower had nothing to do

56 reader’s digest omnibus

but visit his troops. In the morning, he drove to a nearby port
and chatted wth British soldiers boarding their landing-craft.
In the evening he drove to airfields where men of the loist U.S.
Airborne Division were loading in their transport planes and
black gliders. As he rolled up in his four-starred Cadillac at
airfield after airfield, the men were already colouring their
faces with cocoa and linseed oil. He went about from group to
group wisecracking ivith them, partly to relieve their tension,
partly his own.

As the boys climbed into their dark planes, the General called
out, ‘Good luck*’ He was noticeably affected. To drop several
divisions of airborne and paratroop forces imlcs behind the
Atlantic Wall, long before H-Hour on the beaches, was a
tremendous risk. Many of his oivn staff officers, British and
American, had strongly advised against it. If the beach-heads
%veren’t established securely it meant several divisions ofsupcrbly
trained troops would be lost. The General took the risk. He
knew that, in taking it, he was sending some of them to certain
death. They knew it, too.

The first phone call on D-Day, 6 June, came to Eisenhoivcr’s
office about 7 a.m. Commander Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s
friend and naval aide, answered. It was Lcigh-Mallory report-
ing that airborne and paratroop landings had been unbelievably
successful and that the first assault landings had been success-
fully made. Butcher stepped across the cinders to Ike’s ‘circus
waggon’ expecting to find the General still asleep, but he was
in bed propped up behind a "Wild "West novel. Butcher told him
Leigh-Mallory’s ne\vs. ‘Am I glad!’ breathed the General.

Admiral Ramsay reported that the naval part of the show
was 100 per cent successful, wth few losses. In fact, the landings
had taken the Germans entirely by surpnse. Ramsay had craftily
sent a decoy convoy up through the Channel late on the eve
of D-Day. The German coastal gunners had opened up with
evciy'thing they had on the unfortunate decoy convoy and then
shut do^vn for the night, ^\^lercupon the real invasion armada
sailed immolcsted right to its goal.

At breakfast that D-Day morning. General Eisenho%ver w'as
animated and happy for the first time in months. He talked to
Butcher about other D-Days he’d been on - North Africa, which
he directed from Gibraltar, Pantelleria, Sicily, which he directed

THE INVASION

57

from Malta, and Salerno. Compared to these, said the General,
the invasion of France had produced the quietest D-Day of all.

The weather remained his biggest worry, and even before
Butcher had called him he had been out of his caravan, peering
up at the skies through the trees. As the sun began occasionally
to peep through the clouds he relaxed.

At ^e nerve centre of shaef there was one c hillin g moment
that morning, when the first signal came firom the beaches. It
was rushed to the staflF chiefs They opened the message and
read that the first assault wave had drowned. Faces went white.
Then someone asked hurriedly for a repeat of the message. For
a mmute or two they umted. Tlien came the repeat There had
been a mistake. The correct message was that the first assault
wave had grounded.

'W'ithin 48 hours of H-Hour, the mvasion spearhead had
established a foothold in France. And without the fidghtful toll
of casualties which professional pessimists had predicted.

On D-pIus-six, a week after the invasion began, more than
500 square miles of Europe had been occupied by Alhed armies.
The lives of many of our bravest and best were yet to be taken.
But the bndgehead mto France had been established.

\Miat Phihp of Spam failed to do, what Napoleon tried and
failed to do, what Hitler never had the courage to do, the Alhed
armies under General Eisenhower had dared and done.

II. ARMADA IN ACTION
The Channel Crossing in the Flagship

FREDERIC SONDERN, JR

This was It - D-Day and almost H-Hour. A few' miles ahead on
the low-lvdng coast of France, not far from Cherbourg, a light-
house wdnked peacefully. The bndge telegraph tmkled and our
engines stopped throbbmg. The anchor chain rattled through
its hawsehole. Our w'histle roared a hoarse signal and all around
us the silhouettes of dozens of other ships came to rest It was
very quiet there in the moonlight, much too quiet, I thought, as
w e ivaited for the first German gun to blast its challenge from
the shore

58 reader’s digest omnibus

They could hardly believe it in the wardroom of the flagship.
Turning from a big wall chart, the Admiral’s navigation ofiiccr
shut his dividers with a snap. ‘On the nose, by Godl’ he an-
nounced. The intelligence officer rubbed his head. ‘Not a smell
of them all the way across,’ he said, ‘and if they knew we vere
here, they’d have opened up already.’ The Chief of Staff smiled
his wry smile. ‘Maybe they’re just waiting to give us a surpnse
when they get us figured out. ’iVe can’t be that good.’ But he
was wrong. The big German coastal batteries remained silent,
and as nerve-racking minutes ticked by, the battleships, trans-
ports and landing-craft of our task force slipped into their
exactly prearranged positions unmolested.

It was very quiet in the ship, too. "We had been steaming all
day on a long, zigzag course, designed to make the Germans
think us heading for Pas de Calais rather than the Cherbourg
peninsula. Spirits were gay during the morning. The long, dull
months of training were over at last, and the colossal spectacle
we were watching took our imnds off what lay ahead. Troops
lined the rails as we picked up unit after unit of our tremendous
convoy. At various meeting-places along the coast there were
endless rows of waddling tank and infantry landing ships - their
barrage balloons bobbing crazily in the sky above them - flanked
by escort craft of every land.

And then over the horizon came the impressive line of our
supporting warships. A deft manoeuvre brought us into column
ahead of the battleship Kevada and the cruisers Tuscaloosa and
Quincy. The big guns bristling behind us looked very good.
‘Gee,’ said a young soldier standing next to me, ‘that’s a lot of
cannons.’

I agreed happily that it certainly was a lot of cannons.

As the afternoon wore on, tension grew. Eveiybody was being
very polite. But there were no jitters, no traces of hysteria. A
leathery marine colonel, veteran of many battles, managed a
wintry smile and said that, for green troops, the kids looked
pretty promising. From him, that was praise mdeed.

Wlien an alarm bell suddenly began to clang and a bosun’s
rasping v'oice came over the intercom — ‘All hands man your
battle stations'’ - the call to General Quarters w'as welcome
relief. There really was a Nazi plane ahead this time. It was
10.30 p.m.

THE INVASION

59

In the combat intelligence room -nerve centre of the
Admiral’s command post - a vast picture of the big crossing
was unfolding. We were one of tivo mvasion forces - American,
under Rear Admiral Alan Kirk, U.S N., and British, under Sir
Philip Vian, Royal Navy. Five thousand ships were moidng
across the English Channel, assembled from several dozen ports
and routed on exact schedule through narrow lanes swept and
marked by minesiveepers several hours before The two task
force commanders were link ed with each other and the supreme
headquarters ashore by the most intricate military communica-
tions sj'stem ever devised. There was surprisingly little activity,
however. The operation plan covered all details of every' ship’s
movements and it worked like a clock.

It was about 1.30 in the morning of 6 June when an officer in
the combat intelhgence room suddenly barked ‘Two hundred
planes coming over.’ ‘Enemy?’ shnUed a young officer. ‘No,’
said the commander, ‘they’ll be the airborne boys.’

And they were. One, two, three, and then score after
score of the big transports thundered by overhead. On the
pemnsula German flak began roaring and searchhghts swept
the sky.

A few minutes later, the commander turned to the radioman
momtoring German military stations, alert for the first sudden
burst of activity. ‘"Well?’ he asked. We held our breaths ‘Still
very light traffic, sir,’ said the British expert, reading a ’Western
thriller as he tividdled his dials. He was very efficient, and he
always caught everythmg worth catching, but he considered the
ivar, as he told me, a very dull way of eammg one’s living. He
ivasn’t at all disturbed, as I w'as, about the danger of German
searchlights picking us up. Fortunately, w’hen they started
poking around, the beams were deflected by clouds, and the
Nazis appcirently decided it was just another air raid. The
coastal battenes which could have given us temble punishment
were still silent

We knew that just then airborne divisions were going down.
Parachutists went dowm first, to clear strategic fields of the poles
and other traps which the Germans had set for ghders The
parachutists worked quickly with grenades and mine detectors,
but the glidermen suffered casualties nevertheless.

Along the beaches, commandos and rangers w'ere busy, too.

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THE INVASION

6l

one direction, his gun in the other — our hearts \\ent into our
throats. ’iVas this going to be the catastrophe we had just
avoided in the Sicilian landing?

Somehow at last the landmg-craft were loaded. The bleak
strained faces at command positions began to relax. At 5 40 -
as though at touch of a button - the warships ahead of us
began belloiving. Our teeth rattled as flash followed flash and
shells of every cahbre whined from the battleships, crmsers
and destroyers on to the beach. Over the whole assault area,
600 guns m 80 ships put doivn 2,000 tons of explosives m ten
minutes.

Actually both the bombmg and the naval gunnery were the
most carefully prepared and co-ordmated barrage of the war.
On the highly important chart m the war-room which scheduled
the attack of every bomber squadron and the fire of every ship
in our task force, German positions and battenes were marked.
Their priority for attention had been decided according to
their size, range and abihty to mterfere with our operation.
One coastal battery particularly, set in the side of a hill and
practically invulnerable to air attack, could have mauled
us badly while unloading. ‘That one, gentlemen,’ the Admiral
had said at pre-D-Day briefing, ‘is a must.’ Salvos of 14-mch
shells from one of our battleships began hitting it precisely
on schedule and, when a ranger party arrived a little later
for mopping-up, they found not one hve German in the
fortification.

Small, slow spottmg planes cruised lazily over the target
areas, their observers talking directly to their fire-control officers
afloat and correcting aim as the shells came over. It w as beautiful
shooting and at almost regular inter\'als the commander in our
inteUigence room put a new sticker against one of the red rings
on the chart. ‘Destroyed’, it said

Behind this curtain, the loaded landing boats formed exactly
spaced waves for the final run to the beach. Heading them.
Navy scouts in control craft found the exact boundaries of
assigned beaches - no easy job in the dust and smoke of a
bombardment ivhich had blasted almost every recognisable
landmark, and in the teeth of machme-gun and \'icious mortar
fire. The scouts guided m demohtion crews of the Naval beach
battahon, w'ho with thear bombs and Bangalore torpedoes, had

62

reader’s digest omnibus

to blast a way through the maze of hedgehog-like steel struc-
tures, up-piled rails, barbed wire and mines. We could see them
calmly paddling boats and setting their charges, wth lead and
steel slapping the water all around them. The leaders of this
toughest job were men wth Mediterranean experience, but the
rest were boys being shot at for the first time.

Through cleared channels came hke clockwork the personnel
landing-craft loaded with troops, and tank landing-craft, with
tanks firing from them. Over Aeir heads and from the flanks,
rocket craft sent fantastic salvos swishing, to explode mines on
shore ivith their closely-patterned miniature earthquakes and to
tear open barbed wire. Small, fast rocket craft, motor torpedo
boats, flak ships and destroyers close inshore poured a last burst
of drenching fire, then agam as by clockwork the curtain lifted
and the leading landing-craft rammed their bows into the sand,
to drop ramps and discharge line after line of crouching, miming,
firing men and roaring tanks.

It was H-Hour and the invasion had begun.

Behind some of the beaches in the hours just before and after
H, bad luck and mistakes caused heavy losses. One airborne
outfit stmek an area which the Germans happened to be using
for anti-invasion manoeuvres. Nazi machine-gunners were in
place and waiting as the Allied troops stepped out of the gliders.
In one beach sector, the landing force stmek an accidental
last-minute German troop concentration.

The weather was not at all co-operative. Four-foot waves
delayed troop loading and landing at some places by over 6o
minutes past schedule. By that time, the fast Normandy tide
had dropped sharply, the landing-craft grounded far out and
left men w’ading through four feet of water and under leaden
hail without cover. The delay let the Germans regroup their
artillcr)' and it cost us lives, but it did not give them time to
bring up sizeable reinforcements which might have caused
disaster.

On the whole, however, surprise was complete. The Germans
had, as a gold-braided wit said, been ‘caught with their Panzers
down.’ The American and Royal Navies had fulfilled Admiral
Ramsay’s promise to Eisenhower — ‘We will land you there to
the inch.’ ‘The miracle,’ as Ernie Pyle wTote, ‘of landing there
at all’ had been accomplished.

THE INVASION

63

III. BEACH-HEAD PANORAMA
A graphic stoiy ranking wtlk war's most brilliant reporting
IRA WOLFERT

This Normandy beach-head of ours is the fourth beach-head I
have been on in the last two years. All beach-heads are unlike
anything else on earth. Thousands of thmgs are going on at
once, from life to death, from hysterical triumph to crushing
failure. Night is different from day only because the light is
poorer, the tracer bullets more lund, the waves creamier and
your particular task either harder or easier You work until
your job is done or your superior feels too exhausted to uork
you any longer Then you sleep until prodded awake by
explosions or bullets or some other urgency

Our first view of France, fi-om the U.S. Coast Guard troop
transport that earned us across the Channel, was that reflected
by anti-aircraft shells hghtmg up the night above Normandy
It was a little past i a m. on D-Day, and paratroopers were
beginmng to land, their planes showered by whole buckets of
blazing shells and golf-ball flak One plane went dowm, then
another and another, in plain sight of our ship, while our men
stood silently in the darkness, their faces gnm and their hearts sick.

The transport anchored about 1 1 miles offshore, and at daum
after a terrific naval and air bombardment of the beaches, we
transferred to small boats for the landing The boats were being
thrown five and ten feet into the air and digging deep into the
troughs between the waves, and the leap from the slippery*
ladder to a greasy hatch had to be timed mcely.

To the right and left and ahead and behind, farther than a
man could see, the scene was the same - a spreading mass of
ships lying-to, waiting patiently as cows to be unloaded, each
deep-laden and teemmg ivith men and goods. The w’aters
between them w^ere teeimng too, with small boats threading
back and forth and hanging to the sides of the larger vessels like
the metal spangles of a tambounne

"We passed under a sky full of aeroplanes laid layer upon la> er
on top of each other. 'We passed w'arships bombarding the
enemy, and saiv the splashes of enemy shells trying to hit the

64 reader’s digest omnibus

ships. An inferno was brewing on the beach: smoke w’as clotting
up from it, and blinding white and orange blasts of explosion
flickered hotly.

Then the war reached out a giant paw and struck dead ahead
of us. There was a big explosion. Grey smoke and white water
rose hundreds of feet into the air. Out of its centre a mortally
stricken minesweeper plunged and tilted, bleeding oil in spouts
as if an artery had been severed. Then it righted itself and lay
quietly, with the big, gaseous-looking bubbling that ships make
when they die.

Standing by to pick up survivors we came first to those who
had been blown farthest by the explosion. They were all dead.
‘Leave the dead and take the living first,’ cried Lieutenant John
Tripson.

And then, from all over the sea around us, sounding small
and childlike in the wild world of waters, came cries of ‘Help!
Help!’ and one startling, pathetic cry of ‘Please help me!’

Big John Tripson is a Mississippi boy who used to play foot-
ball for the Detroit Lions. His strength came in handy now. The
wet boys in the sea with all they had on them weighed up to
300 pounds. Big John reached out and scooped them up wth
one hand, holding on to the boat with the other. We fished six
out of the water, t\vo of them umnjurcd, taking only the hving
and leaving the dead awash like derelicts in the unheeding sea.
One man was naked. Every stitch of clothing, including his
shoes and socks, had been blown off and his body was welted all
over as if he had been thrashed by a cat-o’-ninc-tails.

Other rescue ships had come alongside the minesweeper now,
and we stood out again on our mission. Close to us was the U.S.
Cruiser Tuscaloosa. A German battery had challenged her, and
she and an American destroyer had taken up the challenge. The
Germans were using a very fine smokeless powder that made it
impossible to spot their gun sites unless one happened to be
looking right there when the muzzle flash gave them away.
They also had some kind of bellows arrangement that puffed
out a billow’ of gun smoke from a position safely removed
from the actual batteiy'. This was to throw off the spotters, but
their best protection was the casements of earth-and-concrcte
I2i feet thick.

The ‘affair between the battery and the warships had the

THE INVASION

65

colour of a duel to it. ^NTien the Germans threiv doivn the
gauntlet you could see the gauntlet splash in the water. It ivas a
range-findmg shell. Then the shells started walking towards our
warship, m a straight line If you foUoived them on back you
would eventucilly get to the battery. This was what our warship
commanders were trymg to do. It w^as a race between skills. If
the CJermans landed on the ship before our gunners could plot
the line of their shells, then they would win. Tf our gunners
could calculate more rapidly, then w'e would win.

Captam Waller, m command of the Tuscaloosa, held his
$15,000,000 warship steady, settmg it up as bait to keep the
Germans shooting w’hile his gunners ivorked out their calculations.

The destroyer - 1 could not identify it - stuck right with our
cruiser. The splashes kept commg closer. Our ships did not
move. The splashes started at 500 yards off and then went
quickly to 300 yards Now, I thought, the warships would move
But they remained silent and motionless The next salvo w'as
200 yards off. The next one w'ould do it, the next one would get
them, I was thinking The next salvo blotted out the sides of
the vessels m a whip of white water, throwing a cascade across
the deck of the Tuscaloosa.

Now' m this final second the race was at its climax The
Germans knew our ships would move. They had to guess which
way, they had to race to correct range and deflection for the
next salvo. Our ships had to guess what the Germans would
think, and do the opposite.

The destroyer had one little last trick up its sleeve. And that
tipped the whole duel our ivay. Its black gang down below
mixed rich oil fuel, and a gust of black smoke poured out of the
stacks. The ship had turned into the wind, so that the smoke w'as
earned backwards. The Germans could not tell whether it
was the ivind doing that or the destroyer’s fon\ard speed. They
decided that it was fonvard speed and swung their guns, and
straddled perfectly the position the destroyer would have occu-
pied had it gone forward. But the destroyer had re\*ersed engines
and gone backwards

Now the game was up for the Huns. The warships swimg
around in their new positions and brought their guns to bear:
their shells scored direct hits, and the Germans lay silently and
hopelessly in their earth.

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reader’s digest omnibus

On the first beach we touched the air smelled sweet and
clean with the sea. Clouds of seagulls swooped overhead, filling
the air with a whole twitter of flute notes as they complained
of the invasion by American troops. There was bleak strength
here, and bare wild, blowy beauty, and death over every inch
of it.

The Germans had so^vn every single inch of the soil with
mines. In 24 hours our men had cleared only narrow paths,
losing 17 wounded and one dead in doing so.

They walked, slept, ate, hved and worked along those paths.
^ATien they walked they put one foot carefully before the other.
WTien they lay along the paths to sleep they put rocks alongside
themselves to keep from turmng over.

We had landed in the early afternoon. The \vind was dying
then, and the black and grey smoke stood up in spires wherever
one looked and hung in the gentle wind. Smoke came from
planes that had been shot down and from mines being set oft
by mme detectors and from American guns and German shells.
Normandy seemed to be burning.

Men were coming out of the sea continually and starting to
work- digging, hammering, bulldozing, trucking, planning,
ordering, surveying, shooting and being shot at. Amid the
artillery and machine-gun fire, and the rush and smack of shells,
you could hear typewriters makmg their patient clatter and
telephones ringing wth homey business-like soimds.

German prisoners were coming down one side of a road while
American assault infantry were going up the other side. The
Americans had that odd preoccupied look of men going into
battle; but they were a fine, bold, brawny sight as they swung
along.

‘^Vhere are you going?’ I asked one of them. T don’t know!’
he rephed. T’m following the man ahead.’ The man ahead was
folloiving the man ahead too. Finally I asked the head of the
• column. T’m following the column ahead!’ he said.

I laughed and he laughed, but he laughed ivith a jubilant
sound. ‘"Well!’ he told me, ‘it’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve all
got the same idea in this army, and if you just follow the ntan
ahead you’re boimd to get to where the doing is to be done.’

He looked very tan and healthy as he said this, walking along
with a long-legged slouch, chewing a slab of cheese from a

THE INVASION 67

ration tin as if it were a cud of tobacco. He was a soldier to be
proud of.

Our men would go along until fired upon. Then they would
investigate what was firmg on them. If ^ey had enough force
on hand to solve the problem, as the military saying goes, they
solved it. If not, they contamed the problem and sent for what
force was needed - air, artillery or ground reinforcement.

The first French people I saw were a family of typical
Norman farmers - tall, blue-eyed, sturdy and very red-chewed.
Amencan soldiers going up to the front had left the mark of
their passmg on the household’s dimng-table - chewmg gum,
hard candy and some cigarettes. We talked about the bombard-
ment, and I asked how they managed to hve through it.

‘An act of God!’ they said. ‘But the Germans, they were
worse than the bombardment.’

I had forgotten what the French word for ‘run’ is, and I asked
if the German soldiers billeted in their house had ‘promenaded
away quickly ’from the bombardment They all laughed heartily.

‘The Germans,’ one of the men said, ‘promenaded from the
bombardment - zip' the way an aeroplane promenades through
the air.’ The Germans were tough veteran fighters You never
got a chance to make more than one mistake against them. Yet
they were ■willmg to surrender and seemed only to want suffi-
aently strong inducement. They were veterans of duty in Russia.
The Russians seem to have made them very tired of the war
They fight while they think they are ivinnmg, but it is not hard
to hammer them into believing they are losing. They give up

"WTien I returned to the beach more German prisoners were
being brought doivn to await transportation to England.

The bay and its immense weight of shippmg was spread out
before them.

A German officer, when he saw that vast mass of ships, lifted
his hand and let it drop m a gesture of utter despair, as if to
say, ‘WTio can ivin against tins’*’

But the thing I remember most clearly about this long day
was a particular moment in the twihght. It is a picture frozen
in my mmd - the way a scream sometimes seems frozen in the
air.

I was aboard a landmg-craft movmg both Amencan and
German woundedfromthemurderous beach. The Nazi pnsoners

68

THE INVASION 69

deck where the broivn-blanketed seriously wounded lay in silent
rows

As we made our W'ay out into the darkemng sea we could see
fires springing up from the town of Montebourg The fires were
the w'ork of the Tuscaloosa - or, as I found out later when I got
aboard the vessel, more specifically the work of the army’s
Lieutenant Joe Pugash, of Tampa, Florida, serving as spotter
wth a naval shore fire control party, and Lieutenants Theral
O’Bryant, of Tampa, and Wilham Braybrook, of Ohio, sitting
deep in the ship. In the plottuig room, these boys had been
talking to each other over the radio.

‘German infantry is entrenchmg itself in the mam square of
the town,’ JG said ‘Let’s gmger them up ’ The guns fired.

‘Cease firing mission successful,’ said Joe.

Two roads lead into Montebourg. The Germans were
shovellmg reinforcements down from Valognes, Joe was chang-
ing places to get a hne on these roads w'hen suddenly in a very
abrupt way he gave a target and cried, ‘Open fire!’

Immediately aftenvards there was silence firom him.

O’Bryant sat hstenmg to the silence from Joe for a long tune.
A British voice from a plane overhead brought him back to work.

‘There are transports coming mto town, troops getting out of
trucks and taking up positions near a cemetery there.’ The voice
was tranquil and most British. ‘Would you care for a go at
them?’

After the Tuscaloosa had fired a salvo the Bntish voice lost
most of Its tranquilhty. ‘Beautiful*’ it cned. ‘Oh, beautiful* \Miat
a lovely shot*’

It seems that ten trucks full of Huns had been blowu across
acres of field by a smgle straddle. The Bntish voice abruptly
regained its calm ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to be off now,’ it said.
‘My covermg plane has been shot down and a Jerry is shooting
at me. Goodbye all.’

‘The best to you and thanks,’ shouted O’Bryant But he never
heard the Bntish voice agam.

Instead he heard firom Joe. The boy was back overlooking
Montebourg.

‘I couldn’t keep on spottmg for you,’ he explained. He
sounded very tired ‘The Germans had us m a barrel for two
hours and if I had lifted my head to see what was going on I’d

reader’s digest omnibus

70

have got it knocked off.’ Joe began running around all over the
place, spotting infantry positions, troop movements, observa-
tion posts and strong-points. *you sure shot the hell out of them
that time,’ he kept saying in his tired voice.

About the time we were huffing and clanking past the Tusca-
loosa, O’Bryant came out on deck for a breather. He helped us
watch Montebourg bum. ‘That Joe is sure building himself up
a hot time there,’ he said.

The wounded to whom I talked gave some idea of what the
day had been like. A paratrooper captain said, ‘IMien I landed
I broke my leg. I had spent tivo years training, and four seconds
after I go to work I’m out of it- 1 rolled into some kind of ditch.
There the Krautburgers were shooting at me but they didn’t
hit me. I waited in the ditch and thought. Well, your total
contribution to the war effort is that you spared the time of a
man in the burying detail by finding your own grave. A German
started coming towards me. IMiat’s the German for Kamerad, I
wondered, and remembered that Kamerad is the Gennan for
Kamerad. Then I thought. The hell \vith that. I’m going to get
at least one Hck in this war. So I killed the German. I waited
till he got close and aimed for his groin and tvalked my tommy
gun right up the rmddle to his chin. Then I passed out. But I
got one. My training wasn’t altogether wasted.’

A Naval officer, suffering from exposure, said: ‘The whole
stem blew up. You know, it’s a funny thing. There was a kid
blown higher than the mzist. I saw him m the air, arms flailing
around, legs kicking, and recognised his face there in the air.
That kid was picked up later and all he had was a broken leg.’

A glider pilot, shot down behind German lines, said, ‘I
walked all night. I went towards where the guns were shooting
and then I met a Frenchman. I gave him my rations and he
gave me wine.

‘Boy, did I get dninkl I walked through the whole German
lines - and our lines, too - drunk as a goat and singing.’

There is no way to record all the events that take place in a
typical beach-head day, not even in a typical beach-head hour.
There are hundreds of thousands of men in and around this
beach-head, and if each made a record of what startling, violent
things he saw the record would differ in himdreds of thousands
of ways.

THE HEART:

WONDROUS AND COURAGEOUS
ORGAN

HENRY MORTON ROBINSON

Don’t worrj’- too much about your heart, as so many healthy
people seem to be doing nowadays; rejoice, rather, that Nature
has placed m your breast one of her most dehcate yet dur-
able marvels, an organ of surpassing patience, flexibility and
strength. Rejoice, and trj' to understand hoiv it works It will
work all the better for being understood.

Borrow a doctor’s stethoscope, and hsten to the beating of
your own heart. In its steady rhythm - lubb-duj&, hihh-dup - you
will hear the sound of life itsdf as blood courses through the
N'alves and chambers of this inimitable pump. For the heart,
mechanically speaking, is just that - a pressure pump which
forces the blood, uiA its freight of oxygen, food or waste,
through the vessels of the body. If ever this stream should cease
to deliver oxygen, the body cells would qmckly perish.

Dnven by the heart, the five or six quarts of blood in the
average human body makes a round tnp about once every
rmnute In 24 hours the heart receives and pumps out again
some 10,000 quarts of blood, and expends enough energy to
raise a 14 stone man 1,250 feet m the air In a hfe span of
the Biblical three-score years and ten, the heart lubb-</H^r some
tivo thousand five hundred miUion times, without a single
shut-doivn for repairs And - so it seems to one listening through
the stethoscope - \vithout a rest

Yet wthout rest no muscle can endure, and the heart is a
muscle. Though brief, the pauses betiveen ‘dup" and the next
‘lubb’ are rest enough. The normal heart, like man himself,
spends tivice as much time relaxing as it does at work. Besides,
the heart draivs extra rations. Though it weighs but i/200th of
the body’s weight, it requires i/20th of the blood m circulation
for itself.

Your heart is about the size of your fist, and snugly enclosed

Ftrxf publtiJied in *Tke Reai&^s Dt^esf in 1&4S

71

reader’s digest omnibus

72

in a tough protective covering, the pericardium. Attached to
the body only by the great blood-vessels stemming from its base,
it hangs mthin yomr chest, pointing diagonally downward
toward your left breast. It is divided into two parts, right
and left, by a blood-tight wall. Each part forms a separate
pump.

FRESH BLOOD
SUPPLY TO BODY

USED BLOOD
GOES TO LUNGS
TO PICK UP
OXYGEN

HALF MOO>l
VALVES

FRESH BLOOD
RETURNS TO HEART
FROY LUNGS

LEFT AURICLE

PARACHUTE

VALVE

PACEMAKER

PARACHUTE
VALVE

USED BLOOD ^
RETURf^S TO HEART f
FROM BOOT *

RIGHT VENTRICLE

The Secret Places of the Heart

And each of these t^vo pumps, in turn, has two interacting
chambers: the ‘auricle’, which receives blood into the heart
from the veins, and the ‘ventricle’, which forces it out again into
the body through the arteries. The heart’s speaalised muscles
are so cunningly layered and interwoven that they can squeeze,
twist and literally ‘^vring out’ the contents of their chambers
at every ‘lubb’ - in other words at every contraction of the
pump.

What causes the heart to beat? This question, asked 1,700
years ago by the anatomist Galen, was not answered until about
1890, when investigators began to suspect electro-chemical
energy. They were right. ^Ve now know that a land of electrical
timing-apparatus called the ‘pacemaker’ normally generates.

THE heart: wondrous and courageous organ 73

70 tunes a minute, a tiny dectrical impulse which sweeps doivn
and across the muscle fibres, causing them to contract.

The heart, then, is a kind of dectro-muscular pump, con-
trived by millions of years of evolutionforthe purpose of keeping
the blood drculating in two mam circuits. One, startmg from
the left chamber of the heart, is the great ‘systemic’ circmt,
which the blood makes through the entire body for the purpose
of maintaimng its tissues A shorter, mdependent circmt goes
from the right chamber of the heart to the lungs to let the
blood discharge its freight of carbon dioxide and pick up
life-rene%ving oxygen. This is knoAvn as the ‘pulmonary’
circulation

In order fully to understand the action of the heart, let us
trace more precisdy the course of the blood. Dark venous
blood, laden ivith carbon dioxide and waste matter picked up
in its progress through the body’s veins, is drawm into the right
auncle as the aunde hes momentarily relaxed ^^^len the
auricle is fiUed, the valve m its floor opens downwards and the
blood pours into the ventnde below.

"When the ventricle is full, its smooth pumping pressure doses
the valve, which bellies out like a parachute This same pressure
simultaneously opens another set of valves (half-moon-shaped)
and forces the blood out of the ventricle into the artery that
leads directly to the lungs. In the thm-walled network of the
lungs the dark blood is purified by exchanging its load of carbon
dioxide for oxygen from the outer air. Thus freshened, the
blood returns bnght crimson to the heart - and the marvel of
pulmonary arculation has been accomplished in less than ten
seconds

Meanwhile the left chamber of the heart, more powerful than
the right, cames on the next phase in rhythmic umson with the
first Fresh from the lungs, the blood enters the left auncle ^\^len
the aunde is full, the valve opens and the ventnde begins to
fill. A fraction of a second later the ventnde contracts, pushing
Its cupful of blood into the aorta, the huge artery that leads out
from the base of the heart "SMien the pressure in the aorta
exceeds the pressure from the ventricle, the half-moon valves
between them close The brisk dup that you hear is the valves
slamnung shut

From the aorta, ividest of the nvers of life, the red flood

74 reader’s digest omnibus

branches out, ever more slowly, through arteries and arterioles
and capillanes, to every cell in the body.

The heart repeats this process of contractmg and relaxing,
of systole and diastole, \uhh-dup, hxhh-dup, day after day, year
in, year out, in disease and health, through sleep, love and
battle, with the enduring constancy of time its^, with an
efficiency not equalled by any of man’s inventions, and a
courage that passes all understanding.

j

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP

Condensed from The Saturday Evening Post

AIR MARSHAL SIR VICTOR GODDARD
Royal New Zealand Air Force

Since 1915 I have been a professional aviator and, though I
have expenenced disaster by air, I am not given to premonitions
of mishap. Yet as we were about to take off from Shanghai for
Tokyo I was depressed.

After two years in command of the Royal New Zealand Air
Force m the Pacific and two more admimstering British Air
Forces in Burma and Malaya, I was on my way home via
Tokyo to say farewell to General MacArthur and other Ameri-
cans with whom I had worked dunng the war. Adrniral
Mountbatten had loaned me his own plane, the Sister Ann^ and
her crew, both the embodiment of rehabihty.

My depression was due to a forcbodmg that I was about to
cany mto mortal danger all who flew with me, and to the
knowledge that I could not, for want of justification, bid my
passengers remain behind. As an air marshal, how could I
possibly say that I’d been warned supematurally^

It had happened at a party the previous evening in Shanghai.
I was talking with my old friend Brigadier General John
McConnell, USAF, when I heard two Englishmen behind me
begin a conversation which caught my attention at once:

‘Wasn’t this party to welcome Air Marshal Goddard?’

Ftra pubhshed tn 'The Reader’s DigesT tn 1951

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP

75

‘It certamly ^v•as.

‘He’s dead! Died last night in a crash.’

The man spoke wth a disconcerting tone of authonty. I
turned slowly around The man, a Bntish naval commander,
glanced qtuckly at my face and started as though I had hit him.

‘My God!’ he exclaimed wth a gasp. ‘I’m terribly sorry'! I
mean I’m terribly glad -that is -how extraordmaryl I do
apologise! You see, I had a dream last mght. It seemed so
true.’

I smiled. ‘I’m not dead yet. Commander, ^\’hat did you
dream^ 'WTiere did it happen^’

‘On a rocky', shingly' shore, in the evening, m a snowstorm. It
was China or Japan. You’d been over the mountains in cloud.

Up a long time I watched it all happen ’

‘■\\Tiat sort of plane was I m?’

‘An ordinary' sort of transport. Possibly a Dakota.’ {Sister
Ann was a Dakota.)

‘"WTiat about the crew in your dream - aU killed too^’

‘It was a shocking awfiil crash,’ he rephed
I was about to leave the commander when I decided to test
him further on facts. "What he had said about geography and
terrain seemed to fit too well.

‘Did your dream show you w'hat sort of people I w’as travelling
with^’

‘Yes,’ he said, a htde slowly. ‘An ordinary service crew' and
three avilians Tw'O men and a woman. All Enghsh ’

‘Thanks very' much. That’s qmte a relief. I’m carrymg no one
but a sen'ice crew. No civilians. By' the w'ay', I don’t know your
name.’

‘Oh, I’m Dewing, fi-om the Creiy. I’m in harbour here.’

"We chatted aw'hile and mo\ ed apart. I ne\ er saw’ him again
A few' minutes later Sey'mour Berry of the London Daily
Telegraph drifted up alongside me and said, ‘I’m anxious to get
home and would like to cadge a lift to Tokyo w’lth you. Your
pilot said it iviU be O.K by him. Do you mmd?’

"Wfith a fe eling of shock, I rephed, ‘Not at aU. Plenty of room
I’m leaving at half-past six in the morning.’ But m my' heart I
feared this acceptance of Berry as a passenger

That same evemng, George Alw’yne Ogden, the Bntish Consul-
General, gave a dinner party for me. Ogden was questioning me

reader’s digest omnibus

76

about my journey when his Chinese butler handed him a radio
message. Ogden passed it to me, saying, ‘I am sorry to impose
upon you, but I wonder if you can possibly take me with you
tomorrow?’

How could I refuse? The message was from the Foreign
Office; it was imperative that the Consul-General visit the
Bntish high commissioner in Tokyo as soon as jpossible.

I reflected: That makes two ctvilians. Englishmen. But therms no
woman. Anyway, what bosh, wonying about a stranger's nightmare.

Before the meal was over, the butler again presented an
envelope. Another radio message. Ogden said, ‘You’d better
read it. It’s from Gardiner, our representative in Tokyo.’

‘ I have no reliable conference stenographer,’ I read

‘Most grateful if you could loan one for few weeks.’

‘Are you going to be able to help me on this tooi*’ asked
Ogden.

‘I guess I can take him,’ I rephed reluctantly. ‘That is, if he’s
‘a man!’

‘Does that make a difficulty? He’s boimd to be a girl. I’m
afraid.’

Three civilians, one of them a woman.

That was a cheerless dawn at the Shanghai Airport. Consul-
General Ogden had brought Dorita Breakspear, a tall, fair girl
about 20, who told me she had never flown before. ‘But I expect
I shall survive,’ she said. Her trusting remark stabbed me, and I
shivered in the chill breeze off the runways.

Squadron Leader Don Campbell, our captain, didn’t look
particularly cheerful.

‘Morning, Campbell. Got a good weather forecast?’

‘Not too bad, sir. About a hundred miles from Tokyo there
may be a good deal of high cumulus - something like a front,
perhaps. Should be about six hours’ flight.’

With that we went aboard, and shortly Sister Ann soared
away over the sprawling city, set on her course for Tokyo or-
perish the thought! Dewing had said this thing would be in the
evening in a snowstorm. We should be in Tokyo soon after
lunch. I was dog-tired. After a while I fell asleep.

I could not have slept long when the bumpiness pf cloud
flying awakened me. I was breathing rather fast. We must be
high. The starboard wing was searing through the mist; grey

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER GAME UP 77

fragments seemed to be breakmg away firom the leading edge
and flying away aft. Ice'

Donta and Seymour were asleep. Consul-General Ogden
seemed distressed wth his breathing: said he had a rotten cold
in the head. Soon the light grew brighter. IVe were soanng
bhthely in blinding sunlight. But there, clingmg to the shimng
metal of the great, flexing ivings, I could see a thin layer of ice.

Campbell came aft and spoke to me m a low voice. ‘^Ve shall
have to keep above it. If -we go through we shall get heavily
iced ag«im.’

*Yes,’ I said. ‘I noticed that. IVe must be pretty high now.’

‘Seventeen thousand ’

‘No oxygen aboard?’

‘No.’

After a while Campbell came aft agam. *We shall have to
have another shot at gomg through it, sir. The doud tops are
still higher, and we are now at about 18,000 I expect it will be a
bit bumpy.’

In w'e went - into that swling, darkemng mist - and down.

Campbell throttled back a bit. Then I heard the Crack' Thud'
of broken ice against the cabm - ice chunks flung ofif the pro-
peller blades. It grew darker. My watch said 1 1.20. That would
lie only 12.20 Tokyo time. And that wasn’t evening! But how
long before the ice would cease to snap away and, instead,
suddenly build up a great solid shroud^

But there was no snow. Surely Deivmg had said there would
be snow^

Once again those enveloping grey mists were suddenly flung
aside. As if hurtling over a chasm. Sister Ann flashed mto the
dazzling blue among the towering, billowing cloud tops.

Ear pressures and quickened breathmg told us we had climbed
again to heights where oxygen is rare. The Consul-General and
Dorita were ill and famt from lack of oxygen. I feared for their
hves They could hardly carry on much longer at that height.

Campbell came aft again, a little grey in the face from fatigue
and anxiety, but carrying a smile and an air of quiet confidence.

‘Aren’t we above maximum ceihng for a Dakota^’ I asked
‘Couldn’t ive let down a bit steeper now to get to warmer
layers? We must be getting hght in fuel by now. That should
lower the stalling speed if die ice keeps oflf. But you do it your

reader’s digest omnibus

78

own way, Campbell. I guess we shall come through all
right.’ Unless, I thought to m^^elf, we hit that rocJy seashore and
shingle.

Campbell smiled and said he would give it a go.

We started down. Once more began that plimging, jolting,
heaving, that was to continue unabated for yet anoAer four
long hours. We bumped our way down, dow, into the wet,
cold base of that towering cumulo-nimbus cloud. How dark it
grew! Then I heard that vicious crack-crack on the metal flanks
of Sister Ann. Ice. Ice on the props again.

Then suddenly we were out of it - but nearly into something
else! Those yellow lumps heaving there below were waves of
the sea.

And now ifs snocoing hard! Whafs the tinru? Three-thirty.

Sea and snow. That was what Dewing had said it would be. Below
us we saw the blackness of a snow-flecked cliff, with broken
waves lashing white anger at its feet.

The turbulence was the worst in my experience, and it
seemed that Sister Ann might not withstand it for long. ‘W'^e
followed the shore and after a while came over a bay. There,
beside a rocky, shingly shore, lay a snow-covered fishing village.
The beach was less than 300 yards of shelving shingle interspersed
\vith rocks, and bounded at each end by black crags. No fit
place to land.

Out we swimg again to follow cliffs and breakers in that
shallow, horizontal chasm of driven grey snow between cloud
and surging sea. My watch, now at Tokyo time, said five-past
four. It would be dark soon after five on a day like this.

Then we lost the cliff. Fearing to butt into another headland,
Campbell held away for a while, then edged in again.

So it went. ^Ve lost the cliff. Found it again. Never a break.
Never even a stretch of shore on -which to crash-land.

Suddenly the cliff ended again. Visibility improved a bit
Here's a hay. A milage in snow by the shore. Shingle, rocks. The village
and bay we saw an hour or more ago. We must have Jlown all the way
around an island and got back again.

I loosed myself from my seat and gripped my way forward to
the compartment.

‘Let me see your map,’ I said to our navigator, Flight
Lieutenant Anderson.

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP 79

About 40 miles off the mainland there was an island some-
thing like the shape of a hand pointing Sado, it was called.
‘That’s It,’ I said. ‘And that village must be Takachi ’
Anderson looked, nodded. Then he said, ‘The nearest airfield
is Tok>'0, the other side of the mainland. That’s nearly zoo
miles, over the mountains and cloud in the dark. Not too
good.’

‘And no gas,’ I rephed.

That rocky, desolate shmgle shore beside the breakers down
there was our only possible destination Just as Dewing had
said. In snow and storm, in the evenmg.

I turned to Campbell. He looked at me, smihng and deter-
mined, as he said, ‘Bad show, sir, I’m afi-aid If you agree, wn
must land on this little beach. No question of jumping for it -
clouds too low and too much wmd ’

•Yes.’

‘IVould you land wheels up or down^’

*I think you’d shde faster and farther,’ I said, ‘if you kept
your w'heels up and landed on your belly. But if you keep them
doivn and -don’t crash the big rocks, w'e shall certainly turn over.
IMiat about keepmg your wheels down ready to retract, and as
we begin to slow up retract as quickly as you can’’

Campbell nodded, both hands strongly jo^hng the control
column He was sweatmg.

I went aft to do w'hat I could to protect the bodies of my
crew and my companions. Everyone but the skipper should
come into the cabin to keep the tail down. We’d be safer there,
and qmcker out All must fix themselves so that they could not
be thrown, and be s%vathed in blankets, covered wnth mattresses
And so I saw to their dressmg-up for this queer play with
death I, at any rate, was sure I wns about to die.

ANTien we were ready two crewmen staggered aft to open the
door so we wouldn’t be stuck inside. Off it came wth a sudden
roar as the full blast of snow -filled air burst in

The picture of what was going to happen in the next few'
minutes had been in my mmd for the past 24 hours Now I
could hear, above the roar of air, the hiss-squeeze of the wheels
going down. Then down went the flaps, and Sister Ann banked
close to the northern cliff, nose down for landing. The engme
roar subsided. I looked round at Ogden. He smiled at me in a

8o

reader’s digest omnibus

tired, pain-racked way. I looked at Dorita. Her eyes were closed.
I couldn’t see Berry’s face.

Banked over as we were, I could see the curving, shelving
beach with its strewn, jagged rocks and a steeple of rocks at the
end. Down we went, straightening out and flattening out at
the same moment. Then the engine noise died out. High rocks
sped blackly by to port.

Now we are for it.

A rippling, jingling soimd began. Wheels rippling swiftly
over shingle. It grew harsher. The deceleration began.

Let the wheels back, I prayed. But Campbell had. Sister Ann
flopping down.

Bang. . . . Bang! Gr-runch. . . . Oh, that stomach. Up* Somer-
saulting. Belly pull. Stop. Neck-break pain.

Hugeness hurtled by me, striking the back of my head. It was
Ogden, seat and all.

Motion ceased. Sister Ann had stopped dead.

There was a stillness. Then the splashing flop and hiss of
breakers on the shingle ... a quiet whistle of wind.

*My chair came OS’!’ cried Ogden, almost apologetically.
Unstrapping, we began to laugh. I went forward to Campbell
as he was coming aft. We met in the gangway and shook hands.

That night we sheltered in the httle inn of Takachi. As I lay
on the matted floor, I wondered whether Commander Dewing
really had ‘seen’ me, personally, in a state of total inanimation —
dead. I must write to Dewing, I decided, before he forgets what
he did dream.

Months later I got a reply:

I am horrified to hear about your crash. I remember
our meeting and I vaguely remember that dream. No, I
can’t say that I actually saw you dead, but I certainly
thought the crash was a killer. Glad it wasn’t.

For my next crash I want no pnor information. Quite spoils
the enjoyment of flying.

970^

When the librarian questioned the little boy’s book
choice. Advice to Toung Mothers, he explained, ‘I’m collecting
moths.’

JOURNEY FOR MARGARET

A Condensation from the Book by
W. L WHITE

As I westled Avith my paclang, Kathrine said, ‘^STien you gel
to London, darling, why not look mto the chances of adopting
some children^’

■We’d often talked about adoptmg an Amencan child, but
somehow never had. ‘'With all the Wtu* orphans and refugees,
surely there must be some child m England — ’ Kathnne
condnued. I agreed, and m my memorandum book wrote a
reminder m cablese, ‘Uplook lads.’

» * ♦

After I had finished my work in London, I went to a society
which arranges adoptions and I was told that a little boy and a
httle girl would be brought in for me to look over.

Suddenly the boy is there before me - five-year-old John,
reddish-brotvn h3iir; holding in his hand one of those English
schoolboy caps and clutching to his breast a shabby stufied
lamb. He puts out his hand very properly, but doesn’t
speak. But why shouldn’t he be scared and silent? How can he
understand why his father and mother never came back to
him?

I give John my tm hat to play with and he’s puttmg it on
when the door opens. There stands the other child, tiny and
fi:agile, in a httle red coat, red leggings and a peaked pude hood
over blonde hair. Her small face is pmched tight uith grief and
despair, such an intense and naked emotion that 1 am almost
embarrassed. ‘^Ve don’t know what to make of Margaret,’ says
the secretary ‘She’s sulky, naughty and won’t eat.’

Margaret’s big black eyes, which do not quite dare to hope
any more, rest on me for an instant. Then they search devour-
ingly the faces of the women in the room, as primitively as a
httle calf searching for its mother. Now she does a curious thing.

Ftrst pui/ltshed t n 'Tl't Rea^ s DtgesC tn 19-(1

8i

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With one small pahn and then the other she brushes one dry,
burning eye and then the other. A strange gesture.

I become panicky. ^\Tiat do I know about children^ How can
I tell a dull child from a potentially bright one**

For advice I decide to telephone Aima Freud, daughter of the
great psychiatrist, who maintains a rest centre for children made

homeless by the war. She agrees to let the two children stay a
week at the rest centre, to observe them carefully, and advise
me which one to adopt.

As the children get into the taxi with me, Margaret crawls
into my lap -not as a child does with a parent, but as a
frightened animal might creep into the safety of a cave. John
sits contentedly beside me. He points out of the taxi window
and laughs. ‘A bomb!’ Then he stands •with his nose against the
•window, counting the bombed houses

Anna Freud has transformed an old mansion into a wartime
kindergarten in whose basement is an air-raid shelter where the
children sleep. At one end of the room are bombproof cradles
for babies.

Margaret and John are greeted by gentle Hedy Schwarz, the
kindergarten teacher. Again Margaret makes that eerie gesture,
the palm of one little hand and then the other quickly brushing
the dry, burning eyes. Hedy leans down.

‘If you would like to cry, Margaret, why don’t you?’
Margaret stares at Hedy to be sure she means it, then her tiny
chest begins to heave.

83

JOURNElr FOR MARGARET

‘Yovl - won’t - smack — me^’ she asks.

‘No, we never spank htde girls ’

Margaret opens her mouth wde and lets out a voluptuous
wail. As Hedy, kneeling, draws the child against her shoulder,
Margaret relaxes into the luxury’- of long, loud howls dripping
with tears. No longer do the frightened palms force back the
tears Hedy had guessed the reason for that gesture. After
Margaret’s mother had been killed, she had been taken to a
foster mother. Whenever she cned because she couldn’t go back
to her oivn mother, she had been smacked. So you must never
cry for anything you have loved. You must push the tears back
into the eyes.

‘Imagine - punishing a child for crying'’ storms Hedy. ‘To
cry IS as natural as to laugh.’

At tea in the nursery Margaret and John won’t eat unless I
sit ivith them. Between bites they look up to be sure I am there
But why me, whom they have never seen before today?

‘it IS because you are the link,’ whispers Hedy. ‘You brought
them here - you saw and talked to the people they last knew.
Through you they retain a hold even on the mothers who loved
them.’

iVatch Margaret eat* Now that she had been allowed to cry,
this child who formerly refused food consumes two helpings of
oatmeal, a glass of inilk, beef sausage, toast, an apple

When tea is over, the children have baths Then upstairs and
into cots

‘W’lll you sleep near us^’ John demands No, Hedy explains,
Mr "White must go back to the hotel Both children begin to
cry.

‘I want him to stay wth us'’ wails Margzuret. So a bed is made
for me m the room. After the children qmet down I stop to my
pants and crawl mto bed. Six-thirty isn’t my usual bedtime

In the night I awake. To the norh and coming nearer I hear
a muffled hum -the desynchromsed motors of a Heinkel
bomber. Margaret moans in her sleep. Presently the plane is
directly above. John doesn’t stir, but Margaret wakes and sits
up. I tiptoe over to her cot m the darkness. She stretches her
hands out to me and I pick her up

•WTien will it go away^^ she asfe Her arms are tight around
my neck.

84 reader’s digest omnibus

‘Very soon,’ I say calmly. Only I don’t fed calm. If anything
is going to happen, it should happen in a second or two. . . .

Now the Heinkel has gone over, and the danger is past.
Margaret rdaxes, and I slip her back into her cot. ‘Tuck me
in,’ she commands, with eyes closed.

!*! * *

I have decided that I want to take both children to America.
But when I try to get passage for the three of us it is impossible
to get even one extra seat on the plane which coimects at
Lisbon with American boats and clippers. This plane, which
goes but twice a week and holds only eight persons, is England’s
only link with the Continent. Americans have been waiting for
months for places on it. Futile to ask for another seat even for
one child, when they count all weight so carefully that I must
cut my baggage down to 40 pounds.

But wait! Have I got something there? Margaret weighs
32 pounds, John 37. The Air Ministry agrees that I may take
one child instead of my baggage, provided the child sits on my
lap. But this means that only one child can go.

Only one. Which shall it be^ With the help of Anna and
Hedy, I at last make the decision. I decide to take Margaret
She is a very unusual child, says Hedy.

Next day I must take John back to his former foster mother.
He comes sadly down the steps to my taxi, clutching the shabby
little stuffed lamb he had brought with him. Where is the
beautiful teddy-bear I gave him? Hedy explains in whispers
that when she told him to pick out the toys he liked best he
had cried bitterly and insisted that all the toys should stay.
Perhaps because, if he left the things he loved, it would keep the
parting from being final — then he could hope he might come
back.

When the taxi starts I lift him to my lap, but he does not
look at me or talk, or count the bomb craters. He sits, lost in
that sad, protective silence we call shyness.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the railway station people stare at Margaret and me. We are
an odd pair -me in my old stained trench coat, a tin hat
jouncing on my left thigh, my rucksack on my back, and in my

JOURNEY FOR MARGARET 85

right paw the tiny hand of a wee girl in red leg^gs and pixie
hood.

Once when we stop at a station on our journey to Bourne-
mouth, where we are to take the plane, I go out to the platform.
Suddenly I hear a scream of fright, and dash back to Margaret
‘"WTiat’s the matter, darling? Did you think I was going to leave
you^’ She nods solemnly. ‘Daddy won’t ever leave you.’ She
fights hard, but tears gush and she bunes her head in the collar
of my trench coat. 'That’s nght,’ I say, patting her sofdy, ‘go
ahead and cry.’

When we amve at Bournemouth, I find that the flight has
been delayed. So we stroll doivn to the beach. Breast-high coils
of barbed tvire stand along high-tide mark. The bathmg-huts
are piled ivith sandbags, roofe removed, machine guns’ snouts
shomng. On the chfrs are more sandbagged gun nests. There is
no opemng in the tvire through which we can get to the beach.
So we go shopping in the town. Margaret’s outfit had seemed
cute at first, now I see that it is worn, much too small, and there
are holes in the soles of her shoes

Margaret knoivs exactly what she wants - a blue coat, tvith
matching hat and leggings. ■\\'Tiile I get my change, Margaret
wanders to another showcase. There she spies Babar, a little
stuffed elephant, exactly like the one in the book I had read to
her and John

Never after this is she quite so lonely. Babar has tea wth us;
Babar always has a spoonful of Margaret’s cornflakes and a sip
of her milk.

Last night she had no other toy except an empty incendiary
bomb case which she had insisted on bnnging along. It had
fallen in her garden and had been her only plaything ever
since. But tonight she takes Babar to bed ivith her, demanding
that he also be kissed and tucked m.

‘And you take the bomb,’ she says.

‘Margaret, dear, I don’t need the bomb.’

Her face falls ‘I zbant you to have it ’ She prefers Babar, yet
she can’t bear to think of the poor rejected bomb, sittmg on the
dresser, not in bed with anybody. In the middle of the night I
ivake, dreaimng someone is poking a gun in my nbs. I have
rolled over on that damned bomb.

* * *

D

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Early next morning we board the plane. Margaret sits quietly
on my lap. On our journey she does well by a couple of chicken
sandwiches, a bottle of milk and three stewed figs, from my
knapsack. In Lisbon the good hotels are full. We are lucky to
get a room in a tawdry inn down by the waterfront.' There is
no bath in our dingy room with its double bed, a collection of
porcelain vessels, and a peculiarly Latin contraption - a little
white oval vessel on low, spindly legs. Margaret spies it with
delight. ‘Look! a bathtub - just for Babar!’

Then comes a problem. ‘Daddy, I want to go to the lavatory.’

Here we go down the hall — a 40-year-oId war correspondent
escorting a three-and-a-half-year-old girl on a matter of some
urgency. Which door do we enter? I shrink fi*om invadmg the
Portuguese dovecotes marked ^Senhora^ and we enter one
labelled 'Hommi. There is a variegated display of plumbing
fixtures, one of them occupying the attention of a stout
Portuguese military man with handlebar moustache.

He glances at Margaret, leaps like a startled fawn and,
wildly adjusting his garments, retreats fuming with an indignant
jingle of medals.

Late that afternoon when we finish dinner it is dark, and as
we stroll through the hotel lobby Margaret points and cries,
‘Oh, daddy, look! What are those?’

She stares, transfixed with delight. Suddenly I realise that
little Margaret has never before seen street lights : England has
been blacked out since she was a year and a half old.

The next afternoon the steamsWp line phones me that there
is a cabin open on a boat for America.

And after seemingly endless days we enter New York
harbour. I struggle with Margaret’s customs declaration.
Since she is an alien, all her possessions must be listed. Not,
of course, her nightie or her toothbrush. So on the customs
form I list, after Margaret’s name, her entire goods and
chattels:

I toy elephant (used).

1 2-lb. magnesium incendiary bomb case (used).

On the pier is Kathrine, waiting for us both.

* ♦ *

THE BASQ.UE SHEEPHERDER 87

No longer, now, do we have to black-out Margaret’s room,
closing every curtam tightly before she i\ill go to sleep, as we
did in the first month. And at last she understands tliat no
bombs ever drop out of the shiny transport planes that glitter
overhead.

Sometimes, it is true, old shadows rise. But they are only
momentary and come far less firequently now.

THE BASQUE SHEEPHERDER
AND THE SHEPHERD PSALM

Condensed from The Kattonal Jt'ool Grower
JAMES K. WALLACE

O LD Fernando D’Alfonso is a Basque herder employed by one of
the big Nevada sheep outfits. He is rated as one of the best
sheep rangers in his district. And he should be; for behmd him
are at least tiventy generations of Iberian shepherds But
D’Alfonso is more than a sheepherder; he is a patnarch of his
guild, the traditions and secrets of \\hich have been handed
doAvn from generation to generation, just as were those of the
Damascus steel tcmperers and other trade guilds of the pre-
medieval age. And like his ancestors he is full of the legends, the
mysteries, the rehgious fer\'our of his native hills.

I sat -with him one night under the clear, starry skies, his
sheep bedded down beside a pool of sparkling w'ater. As we
W'ere preparing to curl up in our blankets, he suddenly began a
dissertation in a jargon of Greek and Basque. "WTien he had
finished, I asked him what he had smd. In reply he began to
quotein English the Tw'enty-third Psalm. I learned theshepherd’s
•hteral mterpretation of this beautiiul poem.

‘David and his ancestors,’ said D’Alfonso, ‘kneiv sheep and
their w’a^-s, and David has translated a sheep’s musing into
simple words. The daily repetition of this Psalm fills the sheep-
herder with reverence for his calling. Our guild takes this poem
as a lodestone to guide us. It is our bulwark when the da^-s are

Firfi puShsM i** JThe RfaJer s Digaf in 1950

88

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hot or stormy; when the nights are dark; when wild animals sur-
round our bands. Many of its lines are the statements of the simple
requirements and actual duties of a Holy Land shepherd,
whether he lives today or followed the same calling 6,000 years
ago. Phrase by phrase, it has a well-understood meamng for us.’

TAc Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

‘Sheep instinctively know,’ said D’Alfonso, ‘that ere they
have been folded for the mght the shepherd has planned out
their grazing for the morrow. It may be that he will take them
back over the same range; it may be that he will go to a new
grazing ground. They do not worry. His guidance has been
good in the past and they have faith in the future because they
know he has their well-being in view.’

He maketh me to he down in green pastures:

‘Sheep graze from around 3.30 in the mormng until about
ten. They then he down for three or four hours and rest,’ said
D’Alfonso. ‘When they are contentedly chewing their cuds, the
shepherd knows they are putting on fat. Consequently the good
shepherd starts his flocks out in the early hours on the rougher
herbage, moving on through the morning to the richer, sweeter
grasses, and finally coming with the band to a shady place for
its forenoon rest in fine green pastures, best grazing of the
day. Sheep, while resting in such happy surroundmgs, feel
contentment.’

He leadeth me beside the still waUrs

‘Every shepherd knows,’ said the Basque, ‘that sheep ivill not
drink gurgling water. There are many small springs high in the
hills of the Holy Land, whose waters run down the valleys only
to evaporate in the desert sun. Although the sheep need the
water, they will not drink from these fast-flowing streams. The
shepherd must find a place where rocks or erosion have made a
little pool, or else he fasluons with his hands a pocket sufficient
to hold at least a bucketful.’

He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for
His name's s(Ae

‘Holy Land sheep exceed in herding instinct the Spanish

THE BASQ,UE SHEEPHERDER 89

Menno or the French Rambouillet,’ went on D’AIfonso. ‘Each
takes his place in the grazing line in the morning and keeps the
same position throughout the day. Once, hoi\ever, during the
day each sheep leaves its place and goes to the shepherd. \\Tiere-
upon the shepherd stretches out his hand as the sheep approaches
wth expectant eyes and imld little baas. The shepherd rubs its
nose and ears, scratches its chin, whispers affectionately into
its ears The sheep, meanwhile, rubs agamst his leg or, if the
shepherd is sitting dorni, nibbles at his ear, and rubs its cheek
against his face. After a few mmutes of this communion with the
master, the sheep returns to its place m the feedmg hne.’

Tea, though I walk through the vall^ of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: Thy rod and T7y staff th^ comfort me

‘There is an actual Valley of the Shadow ofDeath in Palestine,
and every sheepherder from Spain to Dalmatia knoivs of it. It is
south of the Jericho Road leading from Jerusalem to the Dead
Sea and is a narrow defile through a mountain range. Chmatic
and grazing conditions make it necessary for the sheep to be
moved through this valley for seasonal feeding each year.

‘The valley is four and a half miles long. Its side waUs are
over 1,500 feet Wgh in places and it is only ten or twelve feet
wide at the bottom. Travel through the valley is dangerous,
because its floor, badly eroded by cloud-bursts, has gulhes seven
or eight feet deep. Actual footing on sohd rock is so narrow in
many places that sheep cannot turn around, and it is an un-
written law of shepherds that flocks must go up the valley in
the mormng hours and doivn toivards the eventide, lest
flocks meet in the defile. Mules have not been able to make
the trip for centuries, but sheep and goat herders from
earliest Old Testament days have mamtamed a passage for
their stock.

‘About half-way through the valley the w’alk crosses from one
side to the other at a place w'here the path is cut in two by an
eight-foot gully. One section of the path is about 18 inches
higher than the other; the sheep must jump across it. The shep-
herd stands at this break and coaxes or forces the sheep to make
the leap. If a sheep shps and lands in the gully, the shepherd’s
rod IS brought mto play. The old-style crook is encircled around
a large sheep’s neck or a small sheep’s chest, and it is lifted to

reader’s digest omnibus

90

safety. If a more modem narrow crook is used, the sheep is
caught about the hoofs and lifted up to the walk.

‘Many wild dogs lurk in the shadows of the valley looking for
prey. After a band of sheep has entered the defile, the leader
may come upon such a dog. Unable to retreat, the leader baas
a warning. The shepherd, skilled in throwing his staff, hurls it
at the dog and knocks the animal into the washed-out gully
where it is easily killed. Thus the sheep have learned to fear no
evil even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, -for their master
is there to aid them and protect them fi-om harm.’

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence, of mine enemies;

‘David’s meaning is a simple one,’ said D’ Alfonso, ‘when
conditions on the Holy Land sheep ranges are known. Poisonous
plants abound which are fatal to grazing animals. Each spring
the shepherd must be constantly alert. When he finds the plants
he takes his mattock and goes on ahead of the flock, grubbing
out every stock and root he can see. As he digs out the stocks, he
lays them upon little stone pyres, some of which were built by
shepherds in Old Testament days, and by the morrow they are
dry enough to bum. In the meantime, the sheep are led into
the newly prepared pasture, which is now fi'ee fi-om poisonous
plants, and, in the presence of their deadly plant enemies, they
eat m peace.’

Thou anointest my head ivith oil; my cup runneth over

‘At every sheepfold there is a big earthen bowl of olive oil
and a large stone jar of water. As the sheep come in for the
night they are led to a gate. The shepherd lays his rod across
the top of the gateway just higher than the backs of his sheep.
As each sheep passes in smgle file, he quickly examines it for
briers in the ears, snags in the cheek, or weeping of the eyes
from dust or scratches. "When such conditions are found, he
drops the rod across the sheep’s back and it steps out of line.

‘Each sheep’s wounds are carefully cleaned. Then the shep-
herd dips his hand into the ohve oil and anoints the injury. A
large cup is dipped into the jar of water, kept cool by evapora-
tion in the unglazed pottery, and is brought out - never half
full but always overflowing. The sheep will sink its nose into the
water clear to the eyes, if fevered, and drink until fully refreshed.

THE VICTORIOUS VRATILS

91

‘^NTien all the sheep are at rest, the shepherd la^'s his staff on
the ground wthin reach in case it is needed for protection of the
flock during the night, maps himself in his heavy woollen robe
and lies do\vn across the gateway, facmg the sheep, for his
night’s repose.

*So,’ concluded D’Alfonso, ‘after all the care and protection
the shepherd has given it, a sheep may well soliloquize in the
twilight, as translated into words by Da\dd Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of ny life; and I will daell in the
house of the Lord forever *

SHC'

THE VICTORIOUS VRATILS

Condensed from The Progressive
RALPH WALLACE

I WAS visitmg the newspaper office in my home toivn in Kansas
recently when an item came over the ivires saymg that Robert
Vratil, a Marine rookie, had just broken the all-time rifle record
at Gamp Matthews, California, mth a score of 242 out of a
possible 250 IVe all knew Bob. ^Ve were surprised only that he
hadn’t hit the bull’s-eye every time The w^ay his father had
framed him, he ivasn’t supposed ever to miss a shot. ‘Must have
had bad gun,’ his mother grieved - and w^e agreed

I hadn’t heard any news of the huge and happy Vratil family
for years How were they domg? Well, seven Vratil brothers are
in ffie armed forces; one boy and one girl are in defence i\ork;
aU the rest are raising food to help win the war. ‘The Vratils
aren’t a family,’ a neighbour remarked. ‘They’re am army by
themselves.’

Victor and Mary Vratil raised 17 children and they had
wanted and loved every one. But it w'asn’t just the size of the
family w'hich made the Vratils umque. Vic and Mar>% city-bred
immigrants from Bohemia, had faced every problem Kansas
could provide - crop failures, blasting storms, nunous prices -
and emerged victorious We knew', without ever quite putting

First pvllxif’ei <n * Tke lUadef^s tn 1944

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92

it into words, that in our midst the American dream was being
proved.

In 1890 Vic’s father, Joseph, was a prosperous gimsmith in
Vysoke Myto, Bohemia, Kving with a shoemaker’s family named
Svatos. As a boy Vic learned the gunmaker’s trade and helped
his father with a secret invention - a powerful air rifle. Austrian
authorities heard of the new weapon, began to threaten Joseph
Vratil. So he fled with his family to America and went west to
Kansas, where he bought a farm.

Kansans still talk of the drought of those next four years -
1893-6- with horror. Not a single farmer in our part of the
state harvested a crop, and half the settlers in the county
deserted their ruined farms. But the Vratils stuck. Vic, a strap-
ping young man, worked for other farmers, finally scraped
together enough cash to make a down payment on 160
acres.

Visiting relatives in Chicago in 1900, Vic met a slim, dark-
eyed girl of 18. ‘Mary, Mary Svatos!’ was all Vic could say. He
had not known that the h^e girl he remembered at Vysoke
Myto had come to America, too.

Soon an eight-room house rose on Vic’s farm - and one night
just before harvest Mary Svatos Vratil came to Pawnee County
to stay. The first years were not easy, but Vic and Mary showed
courage, resourcefulness and brains.

They made a fish pond on their place - a wonder the whole
county talked about. The state hatchery gave Vic catfish and
bass ^gerhngs, and before long the Vratils were having two
fish meals a week - no small saving in cash. Besides, every child
(and Vic and Mary as well) learned to swim there. ‘If the
children are to love farimng we must make the farm fun,’ Vic
said. Skating on the pond m winter, with hot doughnuts waiting
in the kitchen, made the farm fun, too.

The Vratils raised every possible ounce of the family’s food
on their own land. They put in an orchard, and then an irri-
gated vegetable garden. Each year Mary put up nearly 3,000
quarts offhiits and vegetables. But even this could not begin to
satisfy the healthy Vratil appetites. Mary once showed me a
record of the food stowed away by the family in a single week.
84 wild ducks, a dozen chickens, four dozen loaves of bread, a
slab of bacon, two roasts of beef, 40 pies, 16 cakes and a

THE VICTORIOUS VRATILS

93

hundredweight of potatoes and other vegetables. Carefully, Vic
and Mary figured out their needs: ten cows and 300 chickens
to provide milk and eggs; t\vo tons of pork smoked or salted
do^vn every year; additional pork to be traded to the butcher
for fresh beef; flour and sugar to be purchased by the ton

Vic, whose English was better than Mary’s, was abvays read-
ing books on farming and on child care Somewhere he read
that nuts were good food for children. Nut trees won’t grow' in
western Kansas - but that didn’t stop Vic He became the first
farmer in our section to grow peanuts. Nor did he neglect to
plant a vineyard. In our harsh prohibition state, even the
stnctest among Vic’s neighbours winked at his superb shemes
and sweet Bohemian ^vines. He blandly ofiered them to every-
one, wets and dries, W’ho came to his door. Wne was a ceremonial
thmg to the Vratils.

I first saw their farm when I went there as a small boy with
my father. I can still remember Vic pacing up to our car a tall,
dignified, stnkmgly handsome man \vith a brown Vandyke
beard and pierang blue eyes The best flow'cr garden in the
county blazed on all sides of the iveathered, comfortable house;
nearby rose a little forest of seedling trees which Vic cultivated
and later planted all about the place; overhead, great trees
interlaced branches. As we stepped from the car a pet raccoon
tried to climb up on my shoulder. \\Tien Vic let me shoot one
of his hand-made guns, I was happy the rest of the day The
whole farm, like the Vratils, seemed strange and foreign and
wonderful.

The Vratils loved pets Of all the farm ivives I have known,
only Mary would not have screamed w'hen the boys blithely
brought home 12 baby skunks and installed them in a front-
yard pen. The Vratil crows, Mike and Ike, became famous
throughout the toivnship. At school recess, the Vratil boys
would whistle shrilly, and the other children’s eyes bulged as the
crows came flapping out of the sky to perch on the boys’
shoulders. Once I sat in Mar)'’s spotless kitchen and w’atched in
amazement as Butch, the only tame badger I have ever heard
of, clambered on her lap like a huge, wedge-shaped house cat.
‘Anyone who has the patience and kindliness to domesticate
•wild things,’ Vic said, 'can learn anything in life.’

I hope I am not making life for this Bohemian family sound

94 reader’s digest omnibus

all sweetness and light. We were no more considerate than any
other rough fanning town, and at first we contemptuously
referred to the Vratils as Bohunks. That hurt. In the first
years they must often have been lonely. Neighbourmg fanners
laughingly told of neanng the Vratil place and seeing the children
hide in the trees and chatter in Bohemian - too frightened to
show themselves. One Vratil boy, although able to speak English,
was so agonizingly shy he wouldn’t recite for his whole first year
at school. Eddie, I think it was. Sergeant Eddie now, last heard
of in New Guinea fighting Japs.

The neighbour women may have laughed a httle, too, at the
clothes Mary sewed for her children. But i6o acres didn’t
provide much income -and 12 boys and five girls wore out
nearly 70 pairs of overalls a year. Yes, and 51 pairs of shoes.

Vic knew he must make more money. But the first year that
he rented an additional 320 acres the Vratils stood on Ae porch
one night and mutely watched a barrage of had beat their ripe
wheat mto the ground. Only a bank loan saved them that
winter.

Again in 1927 hail struck for a total loss. That year Vic,
always one of our most progressive farmers, had invested $4,800
in combines and tractors. Another summer a year’s crop of
stored grain went up in flames. ‘A fanner must never quit,’ Vic-
told his boys sombrely, and went back to work.

Although Vic could be strict enough, never did he lay a hand
on a son or a daughter. He taught silently, by action and
example. He divided the children into squads. Squad i - three
members — washed dishes and made beds. Squad 2 did the field-
work, Squad 3 the milking. Squad 4 looked after the chickens
and vegetable garden. Each week the children changed chores.
When the squads turned out at dawn, electric with energy, that
was something to see.

When a boy got to be eight or nine years old, Vic took him
out after rabbit or quail. The lad would watch how carefuUy
his father shot: how meticulously he cleaned and oiled his
weapon afterwards. When Vic thought the lessons had been
absorbed, one day he would point to the big gunrack in the
dining-room. The boy would select a gun, and another Vratil
learned to hunt.

Many of the neighbours believed only hunting and trapping

THE VICTORIOUS VRATILS 95

earned the Vratils through some of our steel-hard %nnters. It
became a legend in our town that Vic expected his boys to
bnng home at least 23 rabbits for every 25 of lus shotgun shells -
or else. One wmter Harold, Eddie and Henry teamed up and
shot nearly 6,000 rabbits, netting S400.

The boys ‘worked out^ to bring home extra cash. One year
they organised an all-Vratil baseball team inth their Uncle
Charhe’s boys and won the Tri-County League championship.
That brought in some cash, too.

Somehow, with ingenuity and faith the Vratils survived - and
vsith thrift and hard work they got ahead. By 1930 Vic had 640
acres of western Kansas land.

Vic and Mary passionately wanted their children well
schooled, and Pawnee County teachers still say the Vratil kids
were the best mannered, most mtelhgent they ev'er taught
Frank had to pause for three years between grade and high
school to save a little cash. He won a scholarship to the Uni-
versity of Kansas with a straight ‘ A ’ av'erage, and found time
to captain the high school football and baseball teams, as
v\ell.

It was while the children were in school that the Vratils
finally lost any lingering feeling of foreignness Maybe it was
because the teachers praised the youngsters’ smartness, or maybe
it was the kmd thmgs neighbour wnmen said about Mary
Vratil’s cookmg on the da^'s she furnished chicken and noodles,
or baked country^ sausage, for the hot lunch at the distnct
school. At any rate, the Vratils came to towTi more often - all
19 jammed into the family’s tv^o cars Mary v%as ev'en
appomted to the district school board and began to speak at
local women’s clubs - alwaj-s apologising for her somewhat
broken English, but ahvays, somehow, making the most lucid
talk of the day.

The Vratils could v\Tn against everythmg, it seemed. Every'-
thing but death. Helen, one of the prettiest of the daughters,
died m 1935 Vic changed after that we didn’t see him in towTi
so often. Then his health began to fail. More and more the boys
did the heavy work on the farm. During the fall of 1939, when
war broke out in Europe, he took a turn for the worse One
night Mary w oke suddenly. After 35 years, the gentle breathing
beside her had stopped.

gS reader’s digest omnibus

Vic had taught his boys to be patriots. Soon they to
Mary, one by one, to tell her they had volunteered. Vic had left
land and machinery and buildmgs worth about §30,000, plus
§4,000 in cash, so there was nq anxiety about finances. And
some of the boys would stay to work the farm. Mary wouldn’t
for a moment stop the others from going. The long farm years
had taught her that a job was a job, to be finished quickly and
competently. The war was just a different sort of job. Proudly,
dry-eyed, she said goodbye to seven of her sons.

So today Roy is studying for a Navy commission as a ship’s
engineer. Sergeant Robert is teaching Marine rookies the Vratil
way of shooting; Corporal Lester serves an anti-aircraft gun m
Panama; Eddie is an army sergeant; Leo, a second-class sea-
man, is on North Atlantic Coast Guard patrol; Sergeant Louis
fights in the South-west Pacific. And Frank is an Air Force
lieutenant, herding a Flying Fortress through the skies. Irene
and Gteorge are helping build planes, while the rest are farming
or helping others farm.

The Vratils, who began as ill-clad and penniless foreigners,
sick with shyness m a strange land, probably feel that they are
merely paying a debt they owe America. Yet it is America, I
think, which owes them a debt: for a lesson m pioneer courage,
for a rare and beautiful example of the fulfilment of the
American dream.

9m

BARBED WIRES

A comedian sent a wire to a lifelong rival on the latter’s
opening night, reading: ‘1 can’t be there in spirit so
i’m coming in person.’ Bennet Cerf.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once sent a tdegram to each of
twelve fiiends, all men of great virtue and of considerable
position in society. The message was worded : ‘fly at once;
ALL IS discovered.’ Within twenty-four hours, the story
runs, all twelve had left the country.

F. L. Wellman, Gentleman of the Jvay (Macmillanl.

tiTANIA OF THE AIRWAYS

Condensed from Coronet
ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE

The humming-bird is the tiniest feathered creature in all the
worldj one of the most bnlliant m plumage, and the only bird
that can fly straight up, doii-n, sidei\ays and backuards This
faerie Titama of the airway's delicately feeds on the wing
and spcirklingly bathes in tmy ponds of dew caught on broad
leaves - a fljing flower fashioned by Nature in an inspired
mood

Nearly 200 yeeirs ago, Oliver Goldsmith, in his Hulor) of
' Animated Kature, listed three or four hummmg-birds. \Ve know-
now that, includmg sub-species, there are 638 recognised lands
- the largest bird-clan in nature. It is distinctly a New -World
clan, native especially to Central and South America. Eighteen
species visit the U.S , but only one, the exquisite ruby-throat, has
been ibund east of the Mississippi. He is the greatest wanderer
of his tribe; on gossamer wings he makes, ever^' year, the pro-
digious journey from the tropics far mto Canada, tra\elling
along great sweeping cun-es at an approximate speed of a mile
a minute. Moreover he can sustain his pace, for he makes a
non-stop flight across the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 500 to
600 miles.

From so radiant a creature, one would expect lo\ c-making of
a celestial kind. And indeed it is. In a wide arc the wee suitor

Ftm paiStsked tn Tkt ReaJer^s DtgesF i** 1939

97

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sweeps up and down in the amorous oscillations of the ‘pendulum
dance’, his brilliant plumage flashing forth colours from ruby to
topaz, from emerald to sapphire. In a gown that is sombre
compared to his glittering array, the female, perched on a twig,
watches with elaborate indifference. But he dances tirelessly,
sometimes varying his programme with acrobatic feats,
until by a sign that he alone understands, his beloved accepts
him.

If, during these ecstatic manoeuvres, a rival male appears, a
battle royal ensues; often one of the fighters will fall to eai^
vanquished, while his conqueror, almost equally exhausted, will
perch nearby, panting from the ferocity of the struggle. But the
boundless valour of the humming-bird is never so spectacular
as when he ‘takes on’ creatures much larger than himself. He
will assail nearly all the common birds, even the crow and the
hawk -dashing exploits that put him in a class with David
when he defied Goliath. His weapon is his long, needle-like bill,
with which he is said to attack the eyes of his enemies. At any
rate, such is the swift valour of his onset that I have never seen
him fail to rout a disturber of his peace. A most astonishing
display of bravery occurred one day durmg the courtship of
two ruby-throats, as low overhead there passed the shadow
of a great bald eagle. I could not follow the flight of the
gnome-hke champion as he sped after this formidable bird of
prey. I only know that the huge bulk of the eagle flared
suddenly upward, dodged ponderously, and beat a precipitate
retreat.

Insects, often caught on the wing, constitute a regular part of
his fare, but the hummmg-bird exists also on the nectar of
flowers. During the course of 40 years I have seen him at work
on nearly 50 different flowers. He prefers red to any other
colour, so much so that I have seen him momentarily investigate
the possibilities m a ripe tomato. He can be trained to feed on a
thin syrup made by boiling for five minutes equal parts of water
and sugar. Ordinary test-tubes make good receptacles, and are
especially alluring if wrapped in red paper. After a humming-
bird becomes used to the presence of a human bemg, he will
often feed from a test-tube held m the hand.

The hummer’s nest is a tiny masterpiece of architectural
beauty, about an inch and a half in diameter. It may be as low

TITANIA OF TUL AIRWAYS 99

fort from the ground, and ac liigh as 8o. The intenor is
lincti wlh cottony down from fern-stalks or other sources, and
has the sofincss of \ clour. The outside is dehc<itcly shingled with
lichens, stuccoed with hits of moss and wisps of bark, all fastened
with fihies and strands of spider web. In strong light the nest is
dimly iridoccni in soft shades of \cllow, red, blue, and dull
urccii. Sometimes the lichens coscring the nest will be the same
.as ihoseonthcsupporiingboughjproducingaperfcct camouflage.
Indeed, it is usualK vers diflicult to distinguish a hummer’s nest
ftom a Inot on a branch. Location is variable On the front
porch of a home at Independence, California, an Anna’s
liumming-bird h.is nested for i8 \cars (probably descendants
of the original bird) on top of an clcctnc-light bulb, the nest
Ix'ing fastened to the wire.

I'lic humming-bird iiixariablj lax's two eggs, snow-white, and
about as large as little peas, often more than one brood will be
reared in a season llic xoung hatch in two weeks When thc>
arc born, thev arc n.akcd. helpless, blind; and they curiously
resemble insects llte mother feeds them about exerj' 15 minutes
with food that she ha.s parti) digcstcil In about three weeks tlie
infants arc reads to lc.a\c the nest, but first they tr) their wings
Each babx lifts ns xvmgs and beats them until they form a halo
about him, but he docs not at once me Manx otlicr ) oung birds
f.ill out of the nest and flop about helplessly, but not so the
xoung hummer xxho, after he has tested his xxings, takes sure
flight.

Hccau'e of endless xanations in shape and length of
their xxings, not all humming-birds hum Some arc almost
silent, a fact that renders them positixcl) wr.aith-likc. A few of
the tropical species li.axc been heard to sing - a tiny inscct-
hke thread of song Except for the zooming of their xxings,
and the chittcrings of excitement or anger, they arc silent
spntcs.

Walt Whitman says that the marxcl of the joint of his thumb
IS enough to confound all the atheists Let the sceptic also regard
the humming-bird, the Titania of the boundless airways All
tliat we can imagine of sprightlincss and delicate grace, of
daz-zhng colour and faerie charm is found in this tiny favounte
of nature.

child pioneer

i;«-=.diyo„a.e ■

^ Md John s

PSrc^s^sSrS--

before an sistef

^fi^ed eight •lvf^^l i. 'vhose h3/>u ' ®*3gger

™PP0«ae%Vir'“? a

CHILD PIOXEER

lor

brother and httle sisters scurrj-ing into the Conestoga wagon,
kicked out the tiny blaze of buffalo chips, then looked to Carson
for further orders.

Carson described John as a sand> -haired, frccUc-faccd bo%.
clad in a hunter’s red flannel shirt which came to his knees. His
snake-sHn belt carried a knife and poivdcr-hom. In rcplj to
Carson’s questions he said his father and mother were in the
wagon, sick with the bloodv flux; that the remnant of the
caravan to which they had attached themseKes was two da\s’
travel ahead. Carson told John to hitch the oxen at once and
move forw’ard all night and as long the next da\ as his strength
would permit.

We next pick up the Sagers approaching Soda Springs on the
Bear River. There w ere a half-dozen families in this camp and
one of the men was a vet. On the edge of the camp John halted
the oxen and asked for a doctor. He said that for two da)-s his
mother had been too sick to nurse the baby and that he couldn't
make the little thmg drink cow’s milk The \et chmbcd into the
wagon He was out m a few moments. Both the Sagers were
dead, he told the waiting crowd. John called the doctor a liar
and tried to climb into the wagon, but was held back b\ a dozen
pitting hands.

The Sager orphans stayed with the caranui imtil it reached
Fort Hall, a British trading post owned by the Hudson's Bay
Company. The factor in charge of the post w as trying to prc\ ent
American emigrants firom entering the Columbia Valley b\
deflectingtheminto California. Great Bnlain was then beginning
her final struggle to retam her hold on Oregon Temtory. He
told them that the wagon trail to Oregon, made the % car before
by Marcus WTiitman, the missionary doctor, was impassable.
The members of the caravan, already worn and discouraged
and terribly afimd of Indian massacre, decided to go dow n into
California.

John Sager, squatting bv the camp-fire, listened without a
W’ord to the coundl of elders His gnef for his father and motlicr
had merged into one immense desire. E\cr since he could
remember, he had heard his father talk of making a great fann
in the valley of the Columbia, of helping to keep Oregon Terri-
tory for America. John determined to go on to the Columbia, to
complete his father’s life for him.

102

reader’s digest omnibus

He would abandon the wagon; the oxen and cow could carry
the packs of food and bedding. He had learned from an old
woman in the camp how to feed the baby. The next morning
he was gone, leaving this note: T have taken the family back to
the States with Elit Carson. He is in a hurry. John Sager ’ By
this false information he made sure he would not be followed
and prevented from pushing on westward.

There is a break here of several weeks while John and the
rest of the children crept along the valley of the Snake River to
Fort Boise, nearly 300 miles beyond. The Snake writhes through
a tremendous canyon that slashes Idaho from east to west
Barren plains, brutal mountains, scorching heat by day and
chill by night, a pestilence of mosquitoes and fleas - a heart-
breakmg test for seasoned adults. Yet, one September afternoon
there crept up to the gates of Fort Boise a boy holding a baby in
his arms. Except for ragged buckskin pants and still more
ragged moccasins, the boy was naked. His sun-faded hair fell to
his shoulders in tangled profusion.

The factor in this one-man post was inured to all sorts of
hardships, but when he saw John he uttered an oath of shocked
surprise John asked with fierce eagerness if there was a white
woman in the fort. Something had to be done for the baby: she
vomited everything she ate. The factor, ^vith increasing horror in
his eyes, looked doivn on the unsavoury atom in the boy’s arms.
There was no white woman, and the factor suggested a nursing
Indian mother. John declared that nothing could induce him
to allow a squaw to wet-nurse the baby. Someone had
warned him of the diseases a child would contract through such
measures.

At this point Francis came up with the pack-train and there
disembarked such a rabble of void, half-n^ed little girls as the
Scotchman had never seen even among Indians. He ordered his
cook to feed the youngsters, and watched while they devoured
the venison stew, gobbling and fighting like puppies. John stood
aloof and chewed down a hunk of venison which he held m one
hand, supporting the baby with the other.

The factor suggested that John leave the baby and the two
next sisters at the fort. John shook his head. Tlie baby’s one
chance, he deaded, was to get through to Dr Whitman’s mission
with all speed. The factor warned the lad that the baby looked

CHILD PIONEER IO3

ready to die anv minute, anyhow. John’s face flamed; he cursed
the factor and began to sob.

The Scotch factor afterwards set down his feelings in a letter
to his mother.

^ly letters to you have contained many strange tales,
but none that Umted me like this They \sere a scourge to
have about, I assure you, but nothing could lessen the
pathos of them. That lad John! Surely our Heavenly Father
must ha\ e been moved by this lad’s \-icarious fatherhood!
Not that he ^vas a gentle guardian. He took no nonsense
' from any of them. INTien the girl of eight protested against
holding the baby, he jerked the sister across his knees and
clouted her until she begged to take the baby. The stram
had told on him. He isas all nen.-es and unable to throw off
the torture of responsibility. Bv Jove, he ruled me too, for I
sent them on, after a night's sleep, under the care of a pair
of good Indians and flresh horses.

They may have been good Indians once, but e\-idently they
regarded the job of guiding ishite papooses across the difficult
Blue Mountains as beneath their dignity. A feiv days out they
disappeared, accompamed by the horses.

^\*c have fei\ details of the crossing of the Blue Mountains.
The oldest sister slipped under a ponderouslv mo\'ing ox and
broke her leg. John used hard-packed snowballs to keep down
the s\velling. The baby yvss very low and John was sometimes
not sure she was breathing at all. He had to abandon the starv-
ing oxen. The cow, uhich still pelded a small quantity of milk
for the baby and transportation for the oldest sister, must come
along. "With frosted feet, uith festering sores due to dirt and
emaaadon, the children began the last lap of the joumev. They
made five or six miles a day. huddling together at night like
stricken Iambs under the lee of a rock or backed against a fallen
tree, -warmed by huge fires. A thousand times during the trip
the younger children shrieked that they would go no farther.
John forced them to go on.

It would have wrung my heart, but I \\Tsh I might have
•ivitnessed the last lap of that immortal journey, though after
my many daj-s with the diaries I can see it as clearly as if I had
actually come upon them in those mountain fastnesses.

reader’s digest omnibus

104

Now they have topped the last crest, and as they stand gazing
into the vast valley to the west, the snow is bloodstained
beneath their feet. Behind them is a chaos of range and canyon
over which they have crept like infimtesimal snails. Before them,
a wide, undulating plain cut by the black and silver ribbon of
the Columbia River- A moment to gaze, to shiver, then John
moves with fumbhng feet do%vn the mountain. His legs are tied
in strips of buffalo hide. His long hair is bound back from his
eyes by a twist of leather aroimd his forehead. On his back is
the two-year-old sister. In his arms the baby, \vrapped in a
wolfskin, lies motionless as death.

Staggering back of John moans the cow, her hoofs split to
the quick. On her back the eight-year-old girl huddles under a
bit of blanket which she shares with the five-year-old. Francis,
his grey eyes dull with himger and exertion, buckskin pants
reduced to a mere clout and flannel shirt only a fluttering
decoration across his chest, brings up the rear with the others.

Stumbling, rising, panting, but in a silence more tragic than
weepmg, they move down into the valley of the blest and stand
at last before the "WTiitman mission. Narcissa WTiitman gave a
little cry when she saw them and held out her arms towards the
bimdle in John’s arms. Her only child, a little girl of two, had
been dro^vned a few years before. She groaned as she turned
back the wolfskin and saw what lay beneath.

Dr "Whitman looked ivith her while the six yoimg derelicts
waited in breathless silence. The doctor thought that perhaps
the baby was stdl alive and Narcissa took her into the house
and laid her in a warm bath while her husband herded the
others into an outbmlding and began the unsavoury job of
turning them into human children. All but John. He shook his
head on hearing the doctor’s order and followed Mrs ^\Tiitman
into the house. Bathed, rubbed -with warm oil, ^vrapped in soft
wool, the baby showed no sign of life until Narcissa began to
drop hot, diluted milk between the blue bps. After several
moments of this the little throat contracted and a whimper,
something less than a mouse squeak, came forth. At this sound
John dropped to the floor, wapped his arms around Narcissa’s
knees, laughed, groaned, then limped from the room.

All that mght Narcissa sat with the baby on her lap. John,
washed and in decent garments, slept on a blanket on the floor

OBEY THAT IMPULSE

105

beside her. The doctor dozed on a cot nearby. ^\Tiat thoughts
passed through Narcissa \\Tutman’s mind that night we cannot
know. ^Vc do know that she was already worn ivith anxiety and
ovenvork, and the prospect of adding seven more to her house-
hold must have been staggenng Towards dawn she roused the
doctor and told him that she wanted to keep the children at the
mission. The next morning they imdted Ae htde orphans to
become their adopted children

And so the heroic odyssey came to an end. Littlejohn Sager
had fulhllcd his father’s dream of makmg a home for the Sager
family in the Columbia Valley, and of helping save Oregon for
America.

Today, corrupted by well-being, Amenca needs boys of John
Sager’s quahty as never before m her history. WTiat can we do
for the boy 13 years of age that ivill fit him to fill that need?
"WTiat can we put into our machine-softened hves that shall
harden their muscles, mental as well as physical? I do not know.
But I know that love of coimtry is like love of man for woman.
It is real, it is fine, only m the degree that it is based on effort
and sacrifice. May we draw from John Sager’s blood and iron
that which shall make of my son and yours hvmg monuments to
his achievement.

OBEY THAT IMPULSE

Condensed from a Columbia Broadcasting S}stem Broadcast
WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON

For years as a psychologist I have sought in the careers of
great and of everyday people the inner springs that make
for successful living There are tivo which seem to me of
pnme importance: the first is hard work, governed by cool,
logical thoughtfulness. The other is sudden, warm, impulsive
action.

Admitting that I can’t name a single person of true accom-
plishment who hasn’t forged success out of brains and hard

tn'7>e Readef^i Digesf in 1941

io6 reader’s digest omnibus

work, I still hazard the sweeping assertion that most of the high
spots and many of the lesser successes m their careers stem from
impulses promptly turned into action.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses dunng the
course of a day to change the current of our lives. These mner
flashes of impulse light up the mind for an instant; then, con-
tented in their afterglow, we lapse back into routine, feehng
vaguely that some time we might do something about it or that
at least our intentions were good. In this we sin against the
inner self, for impulses set up the lines of communication between
the unconscious mind and daily action. Said William James,
‘Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without
bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder
future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.’ Thus
we fail to build up the power to act m a firm and prompt and
definite way upon the principal emergencies of hfe.

Once, in Holly^vood, where Walter B. Pitkin and I were
retained by a motion-picture studio, a young promoter pre-
sented an ambitious production idea to us. The plan appealed
to both of us. It was, I thought, distinctly worth considering;
we could think it over, discuss it and decide later what to do.
But even while I was fumbling with the idea, Pitkin abruptly
reached for the phone and began dictating a telegram to a Wall
Street man he knew. It presented the idea in the enthusiasm of
the moment. (As delivered it was almost a yard long.) It cost
money, but it carried conviction.

To my amazement, a ten-million-dollar underwriting of the
picture project came as a result of that telegram. Had we
delayed to talk it over we might have cautiously talked our-
selves out of the whole idea. But Pitkin knew how to act on the
-spur of the moment. All his life he had learned to trust his
impulses as the best confidential advisers he had.

Behmd many an imposing executive desk sits a man who is
there because he learned the same lesson. You’ve probably seen
him in action more than once. Somebody is presenting to him a
new idea, say in employee relations. It calls for extensive changes
in oflSce routme. And, decidmg instantly, he calls an associate
and gives instructions to make the change - then and there, not
next week or next month.

^Ve envy such men the ease with which they make up their

OBEY THAT IMPULSE

107

minds and smng into action. But this ease is acquired over a
long pcnod of > ears Rather than being, as we sometimes thmlf^
a pnvilegc of their position, it is a practice that has led to their
success. First in small matters and Aen in larger ones, they have
acquired the do-it-now habit

Former President GaUnn Coohdge remains an enigma to
political commentators because the reasons for his actions were
seldom apparent and the source of his astuteness could not be
traced. No one could seem less impulsive than Coohdge, yet all
his life he trained himself to rely on ‘hunches’. He was not afraid
of his impulses, and the celebrated Coohdge luck followed a
pattern of action based on them. As a young attorney m a country
law firm Coohdge was intervieiving an important client one day
when a telephone message informed him that the county political
boss was in town. It occurred to Goolidge that he ought to see
the local big-wg at once and propose himself as a candidate for
the legislature IVithout hesitation, this usually shy young laivyer
cut his legal conference short, left the ofiice and hunted up the
county leader. That impulse bore firuit, and from then on
the inner urges of Coohdge led him consistently to political
success.

It should be clear from Coohdge’s case that the person who
follows his impulses is not necessarily flighty. The timid soul,
however, is fearful lest impulse lead him into all manner of
mistakes. But mistakes are mevitable - we are bound to make
them no matter which course we take. Some of the worst
mistakes in history have followed consciously reasoned decisions.
If we’re right 5 1 per cent of the time m our impulsive actions we
aren’t doing badly by any standard.

The mistakes of inaction, flanked by heavy reasomng, are
hkely to be worse than the mistakes of genmne impulse. For one
thing, they make our mertia worse day by day Not long ago a
woman whose husband had left her came to seek my advice.
The difficulty between them appeared to be one of tempera-
ment which could be easily adjusted. And the woman told me
that what she really wanted to do was simply to call her husband
up and talk with him I told her to follow that mchnation She
left me somewhat at peace. But she didn’t mtike the call, and in
a few days she was back again. Once more she left ivith the
impulse to call her husband. Unhappily, she never did. And a

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domestic rift that a few impulsive words on the phone might
have healed finally ended in Reno; From childhood she had
made time after time the mistake of letting her impulses die
a-boming, and when the time came for a simple, direct decision
in a situation that mattered, she was unable to act.

We all know people who go through agonies of indecision
before taking any important step. There are always arguments
for and against, and the more we think about them the more
they seem to offset each other, until we \vind up in a fretful
state of paralysis. Impulsive action, which originates in a swift
subconscious appraisal of the situation, might have saved all
that worry. And when a painfully thought-out decision proves
^\Tong, how often we remember an original hunch that would
have been right!

The way to get things done is to bring mind and muscle and
voice into play at the very second a good impulse starts within
us. I know a ivriter who was once engaged on a major project
and was resolved that nothing could divert him from it. But he
saw' an announcement of a contest for the ten best rules for
safe drivmg. The annoimcement flashed a light on the panel of
his mind. Here was something he knew about. He interrupted
his job long enough to get to a library and study up. He WTOte
250 words. He turned in his entry in his own typing, not want-
ing to stop his stenographer from the bigger job. Months later
that obeyed impulse netted him an award of $25,000. The
project from which he turned aside for a moment finally brought
him $600.

Or consider the young college instructor who sat listening one
day to a commencement address by Woodrow Wilson, then
Governor of New' Jersey. The instructor had "wntten a book on
political science, but had sought a publisher in vain. It em-
bodied his innermost convictions and its apparent failure had
caused him to despair of the future of his teaching.

Something Mr "Wilson said made the instructor feel that he
ought to seek the governor’s advice. He had heard that Wilson
was cold and hard to approach; but at the end of the address he
let his impulse carry him forward through the crowd; he grasped
hlr "Wilson’s hand, and said rapidly, ‘Your speech was wonder-
ful! I’ve written a book maintaining that . . .’ In a few pithy
sentences he stated his theory.

OBEY THAT IMPULSE

109

^Vilson shook his head. ‘No,’ he SMd. ‘You’re wrong. I’ll tell
you why. See me after lunch at the Faculty Club,’ There for
two hours Wilson talked earnestly. And under the inspiration
IVilson gave him, the instructor uTote a new book. It sold more
than 100,000 copies and launched him on a distinguished educa-
tional career. The first vital impulse, half-hesitantly obeyed,
was the starting-point.

The life stories of successful people are chock-full of such
episodes that have marked major turning-points in their careers.
True impulses are intelhgent. They show the path ^ve can most
successfully follow because they reveal the basic mterests of the
unconscious mind

There is in all of us an unceasing urge towards self-fulfilment.
We know' the kind of person we want to be because our im-
pulses, even when enfeebled by disuse, tell us. Impulsive action
IS not to be substituted for reason but used as a means of showing
the direction reason is to take. Obviously the path is not w’lthout
pitfalls. To start suddenly throwmg ourselves around on impulse
might be hazardous But at least w'e can begin responding
oftener to inner urges that we know we can trust.

IVe Know that in the midst of reading we ought to stop and
look up a w’ord if the meaning is not clear. We know that we
ought to speak more w'ords of unpremeditated praise where they
are due. We know that we ought to -wriggle out of selfish routine
and take part in civic activities, that we ought to contribute not
merely money but time to the w’ell-being of the neighbourhood.

Such separate moments of achievement are cumulative and
result in ennehed living, a consciousness of daily adventure, a
long-term sense that life is not blocked out and cut-and-dned
but may be managed from %vitlun. The man whose philosophy
is summed up in the feeble and indecisive motto, ‘Well, we’ll
see about it,’ misses the savoury moments of experience, the
bounce and gusto of life.

Thumb back over the pages of your own experience and note
how many of your happiest moments and greatest successes
have followed spur-of-the-moment actions and decisions. They
are renunders that only firom the depths of your inner self can
you hope for an invmcible urge towards accomplishment. So,
obey your best impulses and watch yourself go!

AMERICA’S TREASURE ISLES

EDISON MARSHALL

On 29 June, 1 786, while cruising in the fogbound void ofBenng
Sea, a Russian navigator named Gerasim Pnbilof heard a most
pecuhar sound. That same sound, when I heard it 141 years
later, seemed to me like the full-throated roar of a crowded
stadium when the home team gets a goal.

The hardy captain set sail towards the uproar. After an hour
or more he discovered, through rifts in the fog, four islands.
Two of them were no more than big rocks. The ear-blzistmg
noise was caused by a herd of two million fur seals blackemng
the shores and roarmg, blustenng, coughing and bleating all at
once.

Loading his ship with skins, Pnbilof sailed to Sibena and sold
his catch to Chinese mandanns for what even today would be a
fancy price. But when his agent returned for another load, in
October, the islands were silent as a tomb, the beaches empty
and desolate.

The bold captain tried again the following summer. Again
the seas were black -with swimmmg mother seals, long reaches
of the beach were a sohd mass of fighting bull seals, the sand
dunes were crawhng with young bachelor seals, and the \vild
wheat was alive with /idle bull’ seals that hadn’t been able to
snaffle any mates and were hanging about the harems in the
hope of achieving that very thing. All were yelping and bellowing
as noisily as before.

Ftrsl pubUshed in ‘TPe SatdeT’s DtgesC in 1943

no

Ill

America’s treasure isles

The Pnbilof Islands have made history ever since. ^Mien
Secretary of State Seitard in 1866 wished to persuade a penny-
pinching Congress to buy Alaska from the Russians, the argument
that chnched the deal was its value as the breeding grounds of
the fur seals, yielding then about 100,000 s kins a year. Except
for this treasure-trove the historic deal would have fallen
through.

At first America wasted this treasure m scandalous fashion.
Almost free slaughter was permitted until the herd u'as three-
fourths killed. Then to maintam the yield we permitted sealers
to he off the island and kill the matkas (mother seals) as they
came out to fish. By this practice three hves were taken for every
skin - the mother, her unborn pup, and her nurshng pup left on
shore to stari'e. IMicn the herd was finally reduced to a paltry
150,000, and the beaches were httered with the wasted bodies
of baby seals, our got emment took bold steps, prohibited pelagic
seahng, and prescribed the number of surplus males that could
be killed each season. The herd mcreased, and grew to nearly
tt\o nulhon again.

Naturally, other nations coveted this treasure of glossy fur.
Up to their now’ faimhar tricks as long ago as Theodore
Roosevelt’s presidency, Japanese poachers landed on the beaches
and were imceremomously shot by U.S. guards. For this forth-
nght act Teddy refused to apologise - bless his stout heart -
and the little men of Nippon sis’ore vengeance. Since then the
sight of our Coast Guard vessels patrolling the foggy, roaring
coasts has gnaw’ed mto their vitals, and their jealousy and
hatred w ould have been satisfied only by conquest of the islands.
Our army and naiq' were on guard against an attack, if only
for spite’s sake, on the Pribilofs during the war.

kMiat interests me most about these fabulous islands is not the
50,000 prime skins that the U S Department of Fisheries harvests
every year, soft and beautiful and still an aristocrat among furs,
but the social order of the seals themselves, developed a million
years before the first human being spread a sail in the Smoky
Seas.

The fur seal is not to be confused wth the sea lion that
performs in circuses, or wnth the hair seal found off New'found-
land. He is distmcdy related to the bear, and he moves like one.
Unlike any other seal, he can run on land nearly as fast as a

1 12 reader’s digest omnibus

man. The pups are not bom swimmers; they must leam the
hard way, and many of them drown m the attempt. But the
fur seals become the most beautiful and versatile of swimmers,
and in speed are in a class with porpoises.

Along in May, when the wild wheat begins to sprout on the
Pribilofs, and the lichens drip with the spring rains, the bull
seals haul themselves up on the naked beaches by the hundred
thousand. They weigh five or six hundred pounds apiece, and
are fat from good fishing in the seas of all the world; and it is
good that they are, because many busy months will pass before
they go again to sea, or even taste food or drink.

At once there begins the biggest free-for-all fight in the whole
animal kingdom. The giant bulls tear into one another, each to
hold a certain little area of beach that has taken his fancy.
Before long the best bulls have established their claims, but only
by right of fang and flipper; and if they relax their guard for
one minute even in the dead of night, the homeless bulls waiting
in the grass ■will seize their homesteads.

Yet the bulls do not usurp the entire beach. By an incredible
arrangement among themselves, certain strips are left vacant,
to provide safe passage for young male seals - as yet too yoimg
and weak to seize and control harems - between their interior
playgrounds and the sea.

In June comes the bulk of the herd, a million or so females
and a swarm of young bachelors, or holluschickie. The latter
pass up the aisles to the sand dimes and the grass, there to romp
and loaf the summer through, ■with occasional trips to sea after
belly-cargoes of fish. But the poor little cows, scarcely a fifth of
the weight of the massive bulls, are in for trouble. The courtship
that fofiows makes the famous visit of the Sabine women to
Rome seem a Sunday-school picnic.

The bulls rush down to the surf and seize the approaching
matkas by the scruffs of their necks and drag them to the harem
grounds. Often two or three bulls make a rush for the same cow,
and how she avoids being tom to pieces in the brawl that
foUo^ws was never clear to me. Every bull is determined to get
as many cows as he possibly can, but he pays for his greed
throughout a busy summer. His wives are utterly amoral,
calmly accepting nature’s mandate that to the victor belong the
spoils. The sight of an old bull endlessly rounding up his harem.

AMERICA’S TREAStIRE ISLES II3

roaring defiance at would-be wife thieves, tom and bleeding
'from wounds, without food or dnnk or rest for weeks on end,
makes one understand •why polygamy has never been widely
adopted by humans.

Tlie cou's are hea'vy with young when they arrive at the
islands, and m a few days they drop their pups. Almost imme-
diately the new mothers are again impregnated, at which fact
many a medicalmanhas expressed disb^ef In no other mammal
can pregnancy occur during the first few weeks of lactation. In
other creatures that bear young every year, the gestation period
IS nine months or less, leaving an interval for nature to prepare
the womb for another inmate and for the baby to get a good
start. In the fur seal, the gestation period is ordinarily just
under a full year. The explanation of this mystery is that
the matka has a double womb and uses one side of it at
a time.

The old bull understands that his %vives must leave him every
few days, to go forth to sea, catch fish and manufacture milk for
their babies. Thus thousands of females are either gomg to sea
or hauhng themselves out cver>' moment of the day. And since
by the middle of July there are some himdreds of thousands of
pups crawhng about the beaches, or sleepmg in the pale sun-
light, or learning to sivim in the combers, how can any mother
find her oira child?

I don’t know how she does it, but she does. She seems to
come straight towards him, in tremendous haste and flurry,
knocking aside any neighbour children in her way. Sometimes
a little wmf tries to smteh a dinner as she goes by, but she ^vill
have none of him.

Meanwhile the young bachelors are passing by the hundreds
through the aisles left for them. 'l\’hen they are not out fishing
they assemble in droves in the grass, sometimes climbmg the
sand dunes ivith apparently no motive other than the fun of
shuffling doivn them. It is these bachelors that furnish ladies
their sealskm coats. Sealers come to drive them to the killing
grounds, to club and skin them, and because in their long
oceanic voyages they have never learned to fear men, they do
not try to escape.

Meanwhile &ey are careful to avoid-the harems Not so some
of the mature but idle bulls that lurk at the edge of the beaches.

1 14 reader’s digest omnibus

Occasionally one of these goes berserk and charges the rookenes
in a frantic effort to steal a wife. Sometimes he succeeds, though
often an outraged husband tears into him, bites and pummels
him, and then with incredible strength hurls him out of his
harem into the private groxmds of a neighbour bull. There he is
again attacked, then knocked about from harem to harem in
what appears an outburst of moral indignation on the part of all
the settled husbands, until he is tom to pieces.

However, the greater number of the idle bulls keep their
skins, and near summer’s end they have their innings, truly one
of the greatest marvels in the whole marvellous life story of the
seals. Up out of the sea come the virgin females, a hundred
thousand or more. By now the harem masters are exhausted,
and these sleek and sprightly maidens fall easy victims to the
waiting ‘wolves’.

The latecomers drop their pups the following summer at the
same time as the bulk of the cows, although they have earned
them only nine months instead of nearly twelve. "Why should a
mother’s first baby seal have a shorter gestation period than the
second? Apparentiy the foetus develops faster when the mother
IS not nursing other young; and it seems a thrilling instance of
Nature’s care for her species - staggering the breeding season
so that the young may have fit fathers.

Soon after this, in September, the great outbound migration
begins. The yearlings have by now learned to swm. With their
mothers bearing unborn pups, and with swarms of young
bachelors, they take off from the beaches and head southwards
through the Aleutian Islands into the trackless immensity of the
Pacific. The old bulls linger a while, heaven knows why except
that they seem too tired to move, and then they too waddle
down to the surf and disappear. The Aleut hunters retire to
their smoky huts, the blue foxes feed on the carcasses of the
slain, and the wind shrills across forsaken beaches; but the rocks,
by their glass-like smoothness, bespeak the herds assembhng
here for a milhon years. As surely as the green of spring, they
will come again.

GOD’S EAGER FOOL

THE REVEREND JOHN A o’bRIEN

To be a fool for God, a man must forsake the comforts of the
world and spend his life m service to others For nearly 40 > ears
Albert Schweitzer has been just that kmd of fool.

It began in the market square at Colmar, m Upper Alsace
Schneitzer stood froivning up at the statue of a naked Negro
The submissive black figure, carved on a monument erected
to Admiral Bruat, seemed to Schweitzer to s\Tnbohse man’s
inhumanity to man.

‘Can it be true, as I have heard,’ he mused, ‘that we exploit
these black people and do not give them even doctors or
medicine’’

On the way home to Strasbourg the dark image gave him no
peace.

‘But why should my conscience be troubled?’ he argued. ‘I
am a umversity professor, not a missionat)'.’ He might have
added that, at 30, he had achieved fame m three fields* he was
a ivorld-renowTied Bibhcal scholar; as a concert organist, he
ivas a favounte of Continental and Bntish audiences; and he
had imtten an outstanding biography of Bach.

Then, by chance or destiny, he happened to read a magazine
article about the Congo: ‘IS'hile w'e are preaching to these
natives about rehgion, they are sufiFenng and dying before our
eyes firom physical maladies, for w’hich we missionanes can do
nothing.’

"What Schiveitzer felt then he later wrote* ‘A heavy guilt
rests upon us for ivhat the whites of all nations have done to
the coloured peoples ^\Tien we do good to them, it is not
benevolence - it is atonement.’

And the scholar-musician made a vow to spend the rest of
his life atoning to jungle savages His finends protested, if the
abongmes of AJ&ica needed hdp, let Schweitzer raise money
for their assistance. He certainly was not called upon to w'ash
lepers with his o^vn hands’

First puHishd in *Th£ Reoirr's tn 1946

”3

ii6 reader’s digest omnibus

Schweitzer answered by quoting Goethe; ‘In the beginning
was the Deed!’

His beginning deed was to enter medical school. Nearly five
years later, when he was about to be graduated as physician
and surgeon, he found himself involved in what might have
been a staggering complication. The man of heroic purpose had
fallen in love! His friends exulted: marriage, they felt sure,
would end his impractical scheme.

But Helene Bresslau, daughter of a Jewish historian at the
University of Strasbourg, had known his plans from the
beginning. To her he had bluntly proposed:

‘I am studying to be a doctor for savages. Would you spend
all the rest of your life with me - in the jungl^’

And she had answered : T shall become a trained nurse. Then
how could you go without me?’

They both knew that in tropical forests a medical diploma
would not be enough; one must have medicines, bandages,
surgical instruments. So Schweitzer lectured and wrote and
played himself thin to earn money for the expedition.

On Good Friday of 1913, he and his bride left for Cape
Lopez, in French Equatorial Africa, lliere they found their
first African friend, Joseph, who had once worked as cook for a
white family. In canoes, Joseph gmded the doctor and his wife
on a three-day journey up the Ogowe River to the mission post
at Lambarene. This was the heart of the disease-cursed
territory of which he had read. It was a world swarming with
billions of tsetse flies, ants and disease-laden mosquitoes.

At Lambar( 5 ne, Dr Schweitzer looked at his wife in dismay.
They had been promised sleeping quarters and a two-room
hospital of corrugated iron; not even a shack was ready for
them. Where to store delicate surgical tools that rust so quickly
in the tropics? "Where unpack hfe-giving medicines?

Quickly they pitched camp, covered instruments with grease,
and, to keep medicines from spoiling, buried the bottles in the
earrii near deep, cool springs. Of these queer activities the
natives were instantly suspicious. Naked men who looked like
the statue in Colmar gathered around camp fires, while out of
the deeper forest came the Pygmies, and then the Fangs and
the Zendehs, whose teeth are filed to sharp points for eating
human flesh.

god’s eager fool

“7

Joseph insisted the confab was onunous; tribal magicians
were preaching hatred and distrust of the newcomers But
Schweitzer, ivalching from a distance, saw that many of the
natives were crawhng with disease, swamp fever and sleeping
sickness and a hundred tropical ailments.

‘Let’s get to work*’ the Doctor called to Joseph ‘Bring sick
people here ’

In desperation Schweitzer took over an abandoned hen
house -his first hospital. An old camp bed would be the
operating table

The savages clustered round. The men toted spears and
broad-bladed knives, and some clutched crossbows of ebony,
the arrows tipped wth venom Before this menacmg audience,
Schweitzer confronted his first patients, hardy souls who
volunteered to try the white man's magic.

A man wnth a chronic pain in his nght side agrees to he on
the cot. They curtain m the surgery, but through big holes m
the roof, as the operation for appendicitis is begun, gleaming
eyes peer from a leafy amphitheatre . .

Suppose the patient dies? \Vhat will these tribesmen do
then?

Now it is over Thank God, the patient groans and opens
his eyes. From the jungle point of view, the operation is an
instantaneous triumph, did they not behold this w'hite wizard
kill a native, cut open his innards and then bring the corpse
back to life^ Now the natives wdhngly help to build the hos-
pital; three rooms - examination, w'ard and surgery.

As word of the white magician spread through the jungle,
natives trudged from afar, eager to be killed and brought back
to life. Schweitzer operated for boils, hernias, tumours and
for large tropical ulcers. To care for such ulcers took weeks;
meanwhile the patients camped at the hospital door, and
feedmg them was a problem. Some grateful relatives brought in
fowl, eggs or bananas, but others expected presents for them-
selves. Often the natives, if the>' hked the taste of a medicine,
would steal the bottle and at one sitting dnnk the whole
supply.

To be sure of food, Schweitzer cleared a space m the jungle
and planted a truck garden and a plantation for fhiit and
palm oil trees. Beads and cahco he traded for bananas and

E

ii8 reader’s digest omkibus

tapioca. But to live off the land alone was impossible; rice,
meat, butter and potatoes must be expensively imported from
Europe.

In spite of the many difficulties, the good physician began to
win the hearts of the tribesmen. In the first year, not one
patient died, and thousands were relieved of pain. T.ilrp an
apostle to the deeper jungle, Schweitzer made journeys of
mercy on foot to distant Negro tribes.

That he did not crumple under the strain of these prodigious
labours was due, Schweitzer explains, to a jungle paradox - a
zinc-lined, tropic-proof piano, gift of the Paris Bach Society.
At night when the physician’s work was done, the musician, the
expert on Bach, wotild go to the keyboard and, against the
diapason of wild forest sounds, let his fingers wander through
stem and noble music. Lost in a transport of harmony, he feels
a hand on his shoulder. His wife is pointing at the open %vindow.
Shadows are creeping towards the door of the sick ward. The
doctor groans. Zendehs, confound them! Cannibals, hoping to
kidnap a helpless sick man and cany' him off for tomorrow’s
dinner]

Seizing a shotgun, the doctor fires a noisy blast at the sky.
The terrified man-eaters scatter and flee, . . .

In August 1914, French officers appeared at the doctor’s door
and took him prisoner, '

*^Var has come to Europe,’ they said. ‘You are Germans.’

‘No, we are Alsatians. Wc are working here to ofiset German
oppression — ’

But official stupidity had its %vay; the Schweitzers were
shipped back to Europe and confined in an internment camp.
"When the war ended, they tvere very ill; doctors warned them
never to go back to Afnca.

After three years of recuperation Schweitzer felt wdl enough
to barnstorm Europe and the British Isles, giving organ concerts
and lectures to raise money for his jungle mission. He travelled
third-class, lived in cheap hotels and saved every sou. By 1924
had capital enough to resume his work.

In the years between, heat and white ants had eaten up all
that Schweitzer had built in Lambarene. He must bepn all
over again. In the mornings he must be a doctor; in the after-
noons, a builder. And he mast try to forget the loneliness and

god’s eager fool

”9

the blinding, sickening heat But again, grateful natives pitched
in to help the rebuilding, and I am proud to report that a
Cathohc mission farther up the nver sent to the Protestant
doctor a skilled carpenter.

Soon Schweitzer could ivnte to his supporters in Europe that
deaths in the great forest were going doivn A little later he
could tell them leprosy had been wonderfully checked, only
about 50,000 cases remained, one in 60' ‘Send us medicine,
send us food, for the love of God*’ was his constant plea

At last, after long years, the prospects looked bnght for the
mission. The Doctor and Helene had a 300-bed hospital, with
a dispensary, a modem operating room and a laboratory, a
lying-m ward and nursery. The very latest improvement was
electrification - wth the Doctor doing the wiring
*^Then war exploded again m Europe, posing a bitter problem
Dr Schweitzer faced his wife, and, as always, Helene’s answer
was ready;

*\Ve must not try to escape. The poor sick blacks depend
upon us It IS a matter of conscience ’

This time, fortunately, they were not disturbed.

But letters coming from 'Lambaren6 tell of the almost
inexpressible fatigue of husband and wife To withstand that
tropical inferno, a European needs to go home once every two
years, yet since 1939 Schweitzer has not left the hospital.
\Vritmg last Christmas, he spoke of how impossible it was to
leave the mission now; so much to be done, ‘I ought to be
30 instead of 70 But thank God I am passably robust*’

Friends are urging the Schweitzers to leave Africa for a rest,
but the Doctor demurs Dunng the past trying six years he still
found time to svnte tsvo large volumes on philosophy, and he
wants to fimsh a thirdl

"What IS the philosophy of such a man’ For all his scholarly
profundity, he beheves in simple things.

‘There is,’ he wntes, ‘an essential sanctity of the human
personality, regardless of race or colour or conditions of life If
that ideal is abandoned, the intellectual man goes to pieces and
tliat means the end of culture and even of humamty.’

Another great conviction - indeed, the guiding pnnciple of
Schweitzer’s life — is the supremacy of Christ’s commandment
to love

120 reader’s digest omnibus

‘Only through love,’ he says, ‘can we attain to communion
with God!’

Nearly 2,000 years ago St Paul spoke of those who are
‘fools for Christ’s sake’. Since then many men and women have
marched down history, yielding up the comforts of life to sen^e
their fellow men. With that bnght company today goes that
eager fool for God - Albert Schweitzer.

YOUR SECOND JOB

As told in an interview to Fulton Oursler

DR ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Often people say ‘I would like to do some good m the world.
But with so many responsibilities at home and in business, my
nose is always to the gnndstone. I am stmk in my own petty
affairs, and ^ere is no chance for my life to mean anything.’

This IS a common and dangerous error. In helpfulness to
others, every man can find on his own doorstep adventures for
the soul -our surest source of true peace and lifelong satis-
faction. To know this happiness, one does not have to neglect
duties or do spectacular things.

This career for the spirit I call ‘your second job’. In this there
is no pay except the privilege of doing it In it you •H'ill encounter
noble chances and find deep strength. Here all your reserve
power can be put to work, for what the world lacks most today
is men who occupy themselves with the needs of other men In
this unselfish labour a blessing falls on both the helper and the
helped.

Without such spiritual adventures the man or woman of
today walks in darkness In the pressures of modem society we
fend to lose our individuality. Our craring for creation and
self-expression is stifled; true civilisation is to that extent
retarded.

What is the remedy? No matter how busy one is, any human
being can assert his personality by seizing every opportunity for

First fittUishal in 'Ths Readers Digest' in 1949

121

YOXJR SECOND JOB

spiritual acti\'ity. How? by his second job; by means of personal
action, on however small a scale, for the good of his fellow men.
He not have to look far foi opportunities.

Our greatest mistake, as individuals, is that we walk through
life wth closed eyes and do not notice our chances. As soon as
we open our eyes and deliberately search we see many who need
help, not in big thmgs but in the httlest things. "WTierever a
man turns he can find someone who needs him.

One day I was traveUing through Germany in a third-class
railway carriage beside an eager youth who sat as if looking for
something unseen. Faang him was a fretful and plainly womed
old man Presently the lad remarked that it would be dark
before we reached the nearest large city.

‘I don’t know what I shall do -when w'e get there,’ said the
old man anxiously. ‘My only son is in the hospital, very ill I
had a telegram to come at once I must see him before he dies.
But I am from the coimtry and I’m afraid I shall get lost in tlie
dty.’

To which the young man rephed, ‘I know the aty well. I will
get off wth you and take you to your son. Then I •will catch a
later train ’

As they left the compartment they walked together like
brothers

'Who can assess the effect of that small kind deed? You, too,
can watch for the httle things that need to be done.

During the First ^Vorld War a Cockney cab driver was
declared too old for military service From one bureau to
another he -went, offering to make himself useful in spare time
and always being turned away. Finally he gave himself his own
commission Soldiers from out-of-towm camps %s'ere being
allowed leave in the aty before going to the front. So at eight
o'clock the old cabby appeared at a railway station and looked
for puzzled semcemen Four or five times every night, nght up
to demobilisation, he ser\’^ed as a volunteer guide through the
maze of London streets

From a feeling of embarrassment, we hesitate to approach a
stranger. The fear of being repulsed is the cause of a great deal
of coldness in the world; w’hen we seem mdifferent we are often
merely timid. The adventurous soul must break that barrier,
resolving in advance not to mind a rebuff. If we dare wth

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wisdom, always maintaining a certain reserve in our approach,
we find that when we open ourselves we open doors in others

Especially in great cities do the doors of the heart need to be
opened. Love is always lonely in crowds. Country and village
people know each other and realise some common dependence,
but the inhabitants of cities are strangers who pass without
salute -so isolated, so separate, often so lost and despairing.
'\\Tiat a stupendous opportunity is waiting there for men and
women who are wiling to be simply human*

Begin any^vhere - in office, factory, train. There may have
been smiles across a tram-car aisle that stayed the purpose of a
suicide. Often a fnendly glance is like a single ray of sunshine,
piercing a darkness we ourselves may not dream is there.

As I look back upon my youth I realise how important to me
were the help, understanding and courage, the gentleness and
wsdom so many people gave me. These men and women
entered into my life and became powers within me. But they
never knew it. Nor did I perceive the real sigmficance of their
help at the time.

We all owe so much to others, and we may well ask ourselves,
what wll others owe to us^ The complete answer must remain
hidden from us, although we are often allowed to see some little
fraction of it so that we may not lose courage. You may be
sure, however, that the effect of your own life on those around
you IS - or can be - great indeed.

Whatever you have received more than others -in health,
in success, m a pleasant childhood, in talents, in abihty,
in harmonious conditions of home life - all this you must not
take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your
good fortune, you must render in return some sacrifice of your
own life for other life.

For those who have suffered in special ways there are special
opportunities. For example, there is the fellowship of those who
bear the mark of pain If you have been delivered from bodily
anguish, you must not think you are free. From that moment
on, you feel bound to help to bring others to deliverance. If an
operation has saved you from death or torture, do your part to
make it possible for medical science to reach some other place
where death and agony still rule unhindered. So with the
mother whose child has been saved, and the children w'hose

YOUR SECOND JOB I23

father’s last torment was made tolerable by a doctor’s skill;
all must join in seeing to it that others may know those blessings
also.

In renunciation and sacrifice we must give, most of all, of
ourselves To hand ten dollars to someone who needs it is not
a sacnfice if you can well afford the money. The widow’s mite
was worth more than all the rich men’s donations because her
mite was her aU. In our oivn ways we must give something that
it is a wench to part with, if it is only time from the cinema,
from favourite games or fi'om our other pleasures.

I hear people say. *Oh, if I were only rich, I would do great
things to help people.’ But w’e all can be nch in love and
generosity. Moreover, if we give wnth care, if we find out the
exact wants of those who need our help most, we are giving our
own loving interest and concern, which is worth more than all
the money in the world.

And by some working of the universal law, as you give of
love, you are given more love and happiness to go on with*

Organised welfare work is, of course, necessary'; but the gaps
in it must be filled by personal service, performed ivith loving
kindness A charitable organisation is a complex affair, hke an
automobile, it needs a broad highway to run on It cannot
penetrate the httle bypaths; those are for men and women to
walk through, w^th open eyes and hearts fiill of comprehension.

We cannot abdicate our conscience to an orgamsation, nor
to a government ‘Am I my brother’s keeper'^” Most certainly
I am* I cannot escape my responsibility by saymg the State will
do aU that is necessarj' It is a tragedy that nowadays so many
think and feel otherwise.

Even in family life children are coming to beheve they do not
have to take care of the old folks But old-age pensions do not
rehei'e children of their duties. To dehumamse such care is
ivrong because it abolishes the pnndple of love, w'hich is the
foundation m upbuildmg human beings and civihsation itself.

Tenderness towards those weaker than ourselves strengthens
the heart towards life itself. ^Ve do temble things to each other
because we do not have comprehension and pity The moment
we understand and feel soix)' for the next man and forgive him,
we wash ourselves, and it is a cleaner w’orld.

But why must I forgive my feUow man?

124 'reader’s digest omnibus

Because, if I do not forgive everyone, I shall be untrue to
myself. I shall then be acting as if I were innocent of the same
offences, and I am not. I must forgive lies directed against me
because so many times my own conduct has been blotted by
lies, I must forgive the lovdessness, the hatred, the slander, the
fraud, the arrogance which I encounter, since I mysdf have sp
often lacked love, and have hated, slandered, defrauded and
been arrogant. And I must forgive without noise or fuss. In
general, I do not succeed in forgiving fully; I do not even get
as far as being always just. But he who tries to live by this
principle, simple and hard as it is, will know the real adventures
and triumphs of the soul.

A man has done us a ivrong. Are we to wait for him to ask
our forgiveness’ No! He may never ask pardon and then we
shall never forgive, which is evil. No, let us simply say, instead :
‘It does not exist*’

In a railway station I watch a man with dustpan and broom
sweeping up refuse in the waiting room. He cleans up a portion,
then moves on to the next. But let him look back over his
shoulder and he will behold a man throwing a cigar stump on
the floor, a child scattering paper around - more litter accumu-
lating where a moment before he had it all swept clean. Yet he
has to go right on with his work and feel no rage. So must we
all! In my personal relations ivith people I must never be
ivithout my pan and broom. I must continually clean up the
litter. I must rid myself of dead and useless things. If the leaves
do not drop off the trees in autumn, there ivill be no room for
new leaves in the spring.

You may think it is a wonderful life my Mofe and I have in
the equatorial jungle. That is merely ivhere ive happen to be
But you can have a still more wonderful life by staying where
you happen to be and putting your soul to the test in a thousand
little trials, and ivinmng triumphs of love. Such a career of the
spint demands patience, devotion, daring. It calls for strength
of will and the determination to love: the greatest test of a man.
But in this hard ‘second job’ is to be found the only true
happiness.

A BOY WHO ^VAS TRADED
FOR A HORSE

Condensed fiom The American Magadne
JAMES SAXON CHILDERS

A STOOPED old Negro, carrying an armful of is-ild flowers,
shuffled along through the dust of an Alabama road towards
one of the biuldmgs of Tuskegee Institute His thin body bent
by the years, his hair white beneath a ragged cap, he seemed
pathetically lost on the campus of an education^ mstitubon.
Poor old fellow'; I had seen hundreds hke him. Totally ignorant,
imable to read and iviite, they shamble along Southern roads
in search of odd jobs

At the door of one of the buildings, I saw a trim little
secretary' hurr>' up to the bent old Negro : ‘That delegation firom
^Vashington is waiting for you. Doctor Can'er.’

Fantastic as it seemed, tlus shabbily-clad old man was none
other than the distinguished Negro scientist of Tuskegee Insti-
tute, Dr George IVashington Carver, renowned for his chemical
wizardry.

Bom a slave child, he began hfe without even a name. He
never knew' his father or mother. To this day he doesn’t know'
w’hen he w'as bom, though he figures his age as over 70. All his
hfe he has been joyously at work with everj'day things, making
something out of nothing, or next to nothing. Out of his labours
at Tuskegee have come scientific marvels:

From the peanut he has made nearly 300 useful products,
including cheese, candies, instant coSee, pickles, oils, sha\Tng
lotions, dyes, lard, hnoleum, flour, breakfast foods, soap, face
powder, shampoo, printer’s ink, and even axle grease!

From w’ood sha\'mgs he has made sjTithetic marble. From the
muck of sivamps and the leaves of the forest floor, valuable
fertihzers. From cow' dung, pamt.

From the loiviy siveet potato he has made more than 100
products, among them starch, hbrary paste, \'inegar, shoe

First ptiUished in *Tte Jtesdr^s Digest w 1937

126 reader’s digest omnibus

blacking, ink, dyes, molasses. Experts say he has done more th a n
any other hving man to rehabilitate agriculture in the South.

And more still. Doctor Carver is an artist, especially skilled
in painting flowers. His paintings have been exhibited at world
' fairs, and one is going to the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris. He
makes all his own paints, using Alabama clays. He has woven
gorgeous rugs with fibres made from cotton stalks. He is a
skilled musician too -once he toured the Middle West as a
concert pianist.^

‘When you do the common things of life in an uncommon
way,’ Doctor Carver once said to his students, ‘you will com-
mand the attention of the world.’ There lies the secret of his own
achievement.

He was born in a rude slave cabin on the farm of Moses
Carver near Diamond Grove, Mo. When he was six months
old, night riders carried away the baby and his mother. The
raiders took no care of the child; he developed whooping cough
and was dying when emissaries sent out by Moses Carver
arrived to buy back the stolen slaves.

The mother had already been disposed of; no one ever
learned what became of her. The baby was traded back to his
owner for a broken-down racehorse.

The Carvers reared the sickly child, bestowing his given
name, ‘George Washington’. Frail and undersized, he per-
formed household chores, becoming an excellent cook and learn-
ing to mend clothes. The Carvers wanted him to have an
education, but offered him no money. Without a cent, he set
out for a school eight miles away. Alone among strangers, he
slept at first m an old horse bam. Soon he picked up odd jobs
and entered the school.

In his early twenties, having completed the high school
course, he mailed an entrance application to a college m Iowa,
and by mail was accepted. But when he arrived, they refused to
admit him because he was a Negro. Again he worked at odd
jobs and accumulated enough money to open a small laundry.

The next year he entered Simpson College at Indianola,
Iowa. When he had paid his entrance fee he had ten cents left,
and he had to live nearly a week on com meal and suet. For
three years he worked his way; then in 1890 he enrolled at

^ Dr George Washington Carver died at Tuskegee in January 1943

A BOY WHO WAS TRADED FOR A HORSE I27

Iowa State College. Four years later he took his degree in
agriculture, haring earned every penny of his expenses His
work so impressed the authorities that they appointed him to
the college faculty.

It was while Car\'er w'as at Io\\-a State that Booker T.
"Waslungton mrited him to Tuskegee. In accepting. Carver sa^^

a great opportunity to serve his own people in the South He
saw that the cotton lands were wearing out through failure to
rotate crops He saw debt-burdened farmers facing pox erty He
set himself to preach a gospel of native money crops other than
cotton; and aiter study and experiment, he decided that the
Southern farmer could get his money xnth more surety and less
damage to his soil by growing peanuts and sxveet potatoes
Doctor Carx'cr began to xvnte bulletins and make speeches
proxing his contentions. After a time. Southern fairmers increased
their peanut and sxxeet potato acreage. And then, suddenly,
and sadly. Doctor Carx'er axxoke to xvhat he had done. He had
increased the supply xrithout increasing the demand The pea-
nut and the sxveet potato xxere rottmg; the farmers x\ho had
planted them xx'ere losing money.

Almost fiercely the Negro scientist went to xvork, spending
da>s and nights m his laboratoiy. seeking nexv uses for the
peanut and the sxxeet potato. As each by-product xvas perfected,
he gave it freely to the xxorld, askmg only that it be used for the
benefit of mankind.

Inexitably his work brought ofiers to leave Tuskegee. In

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reader’s digest omnibus

Doctor Carver’s office are two autographed pictures from Edison.
‘He sent me one of them when he asked me to come to his
laboratory and work -tvith him,’ Doctor Carver explained. ‘He
sent me the other, the larger one, when I told him that my work
was here in the South, and that I didn’t think God wanted me
to leave it.’ Another offer tempted the old Negro with a salary
of $100,000. He refused it. He stayed in Tuskegee, where his
meagre salary is quickly consumed in anonymously paying the
bills of worthy boys, both white and black, who are trying to
get an education. He continues to wear the old alpaca coat and
black trousers which he has so often mended, and neckties
which he knits out of fibres that he makes himself.

One of Dr Carver’s first big jobs at Tuskegee was to take over
and work ig acres of the worst land in Alabama. The best
methods of farming had previously produced a net loss of $16.25
an acre on this land. Within a year Carver showed a net gam of
$4 an acre. Later he produced two crops of sweet potatoes in
one year with a profit of $75 an acre. These experiments
proved that the world allows to go to waste an almost unlimited
supply of fertilizer that most soils need - the muck from swamps
and the leaves from forests.

■\\Tien Congress was considermg the Hawley-Smoot tariff
bill. Southern farmers pleaded in vain for a duty on the peanut.
Fmally, a dozen men appeared before the "Ways and Means
Committee, each consuming his allotted ten minutes. In the
background, Doctor Carver, ivith trembling hands, awaited his
time. Last on the hst, he shuffled forward to address Congressmen
thoroughly tired of the peanut.

The old man took his place behind the table, where stood
scores of products that he had made. Simply, smiling his humble
smile, he told how he had asked, ‘God, what is a peanut and
why id you make it?’ and hoiv he had sought the ans%ver, how
he had discovered in the peanut products, ranging from face
powder to wood stains. As he talked he pointed to each product
that he, the humble old Negro before them, had made in his
Alabama laboratory.

Exactly at the end of ten minutes. Doctor Carver thanked
the committee, bowed, and started back to his lone place in a
far comer. But the Congressmen would not let him go; they
demanded that he continue his story. He spoke om hour and

A BOY WHO WAS TRADED FOR A HORSE I29

foTfy-jive minutes. WTiereupon the peanut was WTitten into the
taiifiF.

‘Money means nothing to him/ a friend told me. ‘Some
wealthy peanut growers in Florida were suffering tembly from
a diseased crop. They sent Doctor Carver some specimens. He
told them W'hat was WTong and how to cure it. After his treat-
ment had proved correctj they sent him a cheque for Sioo,
promismg the same amount monthly as a retainer. He sent back
the cheque, teUmg them that God didn’t charge anything for
growing the peanut, and that he shouldn’t charge anything for
curing it.’

One day, after I had seen his rope made from okra fibre,
insulatmg board from peanut shells, and dyes from the dande-
lion, omon and tomato vme, I asked Doctor Carver how he
found time for aU his accomplishments.

‘Cluefly because I’ve made it a rule to get up t\ ery morning
at four o’clock,’ he said. ‘I go out into the woods Alone there
■with the things I love most, I gather specimens and study the
great lessons that Nature is so eager to teach me In the W'oods
each morning, w'hile most other persons are sleeping, I best
hear and imderstand God’s plan for me.’

As he turned away to bend over his microscope, I heard him
mutter to himself, ‘God has been mighty good to this poor old
Negro.’

No one can adequately report the strange feehng of spiritual
betterment that one feek when Doctor Carver, with his humble
smile, places his trembling hand on your shoulder and says,
‘Goodbye, my boy, goodbye. And may God bless you.’ It is a
benediction from a simple, a kindly, a noble heart.

A woman walked into a milhner)' shop and pointed out a
hat in the window. ‘That red one with the featheis and
berries,’ she said ‘Would you take it out of the window
for me?’

‘Certainly, madam,’ the clerk replied. *We’d be glad to ’
‘Thank you very much,' said the woman, moiing towards
the exit. ‘The horrible thing bothers me everj' time I pass.’

‘THE TITANIC IS UNSINKABLE’

Condensed from Harper's Magazine

HANSON W. BALDWIN

The ViTiite Star liner Titanic^ largest ship the world had ever
hno^ra, sailed from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New
York on 10 April igi2. She was believed to be the safest ship
afloat; she had double bottoms and her hull was divided into
i6 watertight compartments, which made her, men thought,
unsinkable. She had been built to be, and had been described
as, a gigantic lifeboat. She stood out to sea with 2,201 persons
aboard.

Occupying the Empire bedrooms and suites of the first-class
accommodations were many %vell-known men and women -
Colonel John Jacob Astor and his young bride; Francis
Millet, the painter; H. B. Hams, theatrical manager, and Airs
Hams; Mr and Airs Isidor Straus; and J. Bruce Ismay, manag-
ing director of the White Star Line. Do^vn in the cabins of the
steerage class were 706 immigrants to the land of promise.

Sunday in mid-Atlantic dawned fair and clear. The purser
held services in the saloon in the mormng. At g a.m. a message
from the steamer Caronia sputtered into the \vireless shack:

Captain, Ti/anic - "Westbound steamers report bergs,
growlers and field ice in 42 degrees N. from 4g degrees to
51 degrees ^V.

Compliments - Barr.

In the afternoon Afarconi Operator Bride, earphones clamped
on his head, was doing accounts; he did not stop to answer
when he heard a nearby liner, the Californian, calling the Titanic.
The Californian had some message about three icebergs; he
didn’t bother to take it down. About 1.42 p.m. the rasping
spark of those days spoke again across the water. It was the
Baltic, warning the Titanic of ice on the steamer track Bride
sent ihe message up to the bridge. The bearded master of the

First published ir ‘The Header's Digest in 19i4

130

‘the titanic is uxsinkable’ 131

Titanic, Captain E. C Smith, read the message as he ^\as
\valking on the promenade deck, and handed it to Mr Ismay
•without comment. Ismay read it, stuffed it m his pocket, told
tivo ladies about the icebergs, and resumed his "walk. Later,
about 7.15 p.m., the Captain requested the return of the
message in order to post it m the chart room for the information
of officers.

Dinner that night m the Jacobean dining-room was gay. It
i\ as bitter on deck, but the mght as calm and fine. After dinner
some of the second-class passengers gathered in the saloon for a
‘h^mn smg-song’. It was almost ten o’clock as the group sang.

Oh, hear us tihen we ctj to Thee
For those tn peril on the sea.

On the bridge Second Officer LightoUer was rehe\ed at ten
o’clock by First Officer Murdoch. At least fi\e wireless ice
warnings had reached the ship; lookouts had been cautioned to
be alert; officers expected to reach the field at any time after
9.30 p.m. At 22 knots, its speed unslackened, the Titanic ploughed
on through the mght. In the crow’s nest. Lookout Fleet and his
partner, Leigh, gazed down at the water, stiU and unruffled in
the dim, starlit darkness.

In the wireless room, where Phillips, first operator, had
reheved Bride, the buzz of the Californian's set again crackled:

Californian: Say, old man, we are stuck here, surrounded

by ice.

Titanic: Shut up, shut up, keep out. I am talking to

Cape Race; ^tju are jammmg my signals.

Then, a few mmutes later - about 1 1.40 . . .

Out of the dark she came, a vast, dim, white, monstrous
shape, directly in the Titanic spnih. For a moment Fleet doubted
his eyes But Ae w as a deadly reahty. Frantically he telephoned
the bndge*

‘Iceberg’ Right ahead!’

Bells clanged the first wnming in the engine room Danger!
The indicators on the dial faces swimg round to ‘Stop!" Then
‘Full speed astern!’

There was a shght shock, a brief scraping, a small list to port.
Shell ice - slabs and chunks of it - fell on the foredeck. Slowh

132 reader’s digest omnibus

the Titanic stopped. Captain Smith hurried out of his cabin.
‘What has the ship struck?’

Murdoch answered, ‘An iceberg, sir. I have closed the water-
tight doors.’

A few lights switched on in the first and second cabins,
sleepy passengers peered through porthole glass; some casually
asked the stewards * ‘^ATiy have we stopped^’

‘I don’t know, sir, but I don’t suppose it is anything much.’

In the smoking room a quorum of gamblers were still sitting
round a poker table. They had felt the slight jar of the collision
and had seen an 8o-foot ice mountain glide by the smoking
room windows, but the Titanic was ‘unsinkable’, they hadn’t
bothered to go on deck.

But far below, in the forward holds and boiler rooms, men
could see that the Titanic's hurt was mortal. All six compart-
ments forward of No. 4 were open to the sea; in ten seconds the
iceberg’s jagged claw had ripped a 300-foot slash in the bottom
of the great Titanic.

On deck, in comdor and state-room, life flowed again. Men,
women and children awoke and questioned; orders were given
to uncover the lifeboats, water rose into the firemen’s quarters;
half-dressed stokers streamed up on deck. But the passengers -
most of them - did not know that the Titanic was sinking. The
shock of the collision had been so shght that some were not
awakened by it; the Titanic was unsinkable; the night was too
calm, too beautiful, to think of death at sea.

In the radio shack the blue spark danced, calling for assistance:
‘CQP-CQP-CQP— ’

The sea was surging into the Titanic's hold. At 12.20 the
water burst into the seamen’s quarters through a collapsed
bulkhead. Pumps strained in the engine rooms -men and
machinery making a futile fight against the sea. Steadily the
water rose.

The boats were swung out — slowly; for the deck hands were
late in reaching their stations, there had been no boat drill, and
many of the crew did not know to what boats they were assigned.

12.30 a.m. The word is passed* ‘Women and children in the
boats.’ Stewards finish waking their passengers below, life pre-
servers are tied on; some men smile at the precaution. ‘The
Titanic is unsinkable.’ The Mt Temple starts for the Titanic; the

‘the titanic is unsinkable’ 133

Carpathia, -with a double watch in her stokeholds, radioes, ‘Com-
ing hard.’ The CQD changes the course of many ships - but
not of one; the operator of the California, a dozen nules away,
has just put down his earphones and turned in.

12 45 a m. Murdoch, eyes tragic, but calm and cool, orders
boat No. 7 lowered The women hang back; they want no boat
nde on an ice-streum sea, the Titanic is unsinkable. The men
encourage them, explain thatthisisjustaprccautionarj' measure.
‘IVe’U see you agam at breakfast.* There is little confusion;
passengers stream slowly to the boat deck. In the steerage the
immigrants chatter excitedly

A sudden sharp hiss - a streaked flare agamst the mght A
rocket explodes, and a parachute of \shite stars hghts up the
icy sea. ‘God* Rockets'* The band plays ragtime. No 6 goes
over the side There are only 28 people in a lifeboat with a
capacity of 65

I a.m. Slowly the water creeps higher, the fore ports of the
Titanic are dipping into the sea. Rope squeaks through blocks,
hfeboats drop jerkily seaward. Through the shouting on the
decks comes the sound of the band playing ragtime

The ‘Millionaires’ Special’ leaves the ship - boat No i, wth
a capacity of 40 people, carries only Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff
Gordon and ten others Aft, the frightened immigrants mill and
jostle and rush for a boat. An officer’s fist flies out, three shots
are fired in the air, and the pamc is quelled . . . Four Chinese
sneak unseen into a boat and hide m its bottom.

The rockets fling their splendour toirards the stars. The boats
are more heavily loaded now, for the passengers know the
Titanic IS sinkmg IVomen chug and sob. The great screu-s aft
are rising clear of the sea. Half-filled boats are ordered to come
alongside the cargo ports and take on more passengers, but the
ports are never opened - and the boats are never filled. The
water rises and the band plays ragtime.

1.30 a m As one boat is lowered into the sea a boat officer
fires his gun along the ship’s side to stop a rush from the lower
decks. A woman toes to take her Great Dane into a boat wth
her; she is refused and steps out of the boat to die with her dog.
jMiUet’s ‘httle smile which played on his hps all through the
voyage’ plays no more, his hps are grun, but he waves goodbye
and brings WTaps for the women

reader’s digest omnibus

134

Benjahun Guggenheim, in evening clothes, smiles and says,
‘We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like
gentlemen.’ Major Butt helps women mto the last boats and
waves goodbye to them. Mrs Straus puts her foot on the gun-
wale of a lifeboat, then she draws back and goes to her husband
‘We have been together many years; where you go I will go.’
Colonel John Jacob Astor puts his young wife in a hfeboat, steps
back, taps cigarette on fingernail* ‘Goodbye, deane; I’lljom
you later.’

1 .45 a.m. The forcdeck is under water, the great stem is hfted
high towards the bnght stars. Below in the stokeholds the sweaty
firemen keep steam up for the flaring lights and the dancing
spark. Stokers shce and shovel as water laps about their ankles
Safety valves pop; the stokers retreat aft, and the watertight
doors clang shut behind them. There are about 660 people in
the boats, and 1,500 still on the sinking Titanic. On top of the
officers’ quarters men work frantically to get the two collapsibles
stowed there over the side. In the radio shack. Bride has slipped
a life-jacket about Philhps as the first operator sits hunched over
his key, sending. A stoker, grimed with coal, mad with fear,
steals into the shack and reaches for the life-jacket on Phillips’
back. Bride wheels about and brains him with a wrench. The
band still plays - but not ragtime:

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee . . .

A few men take up the refrain, others kneel on the slanting
decks to pray. People are leaping from the decks into the nearby
water - the icy water. A woman cries, ‘Oh, save me, save me*’
A man answers, ‘Good lady, save yourself. Only God can save
you now.’

The water creeps over the bridge where the Titanic’s master
stands, heavily he steps out to meet it.

2.17 a.m. ‘CQr— ’ The Virginian hears a ragged, blurred CQ,,
then an abrupt stop. The blue spark dances no more. The lights
on the ship fhcker out

2.18 a.m. Men run about blackened decks; leap into the
night, are swept into the sea by the curling wave which licks up
the Titanic’s length. The great stem nses like a squat leviathan.
The forward funnel snaps and crashes into the sea; its steel tons

‘the titanic is unsinkable’

135

hammer out of existence summers struggling m the freezing
water. The Titanic stands on end, poised briefly for the plunge.
Slowly she slides to her grave - slowly at first, and then more
quickly - qmckly - quickly.

2 20 a m The greatest ship m the world has sunk. From the
calm, dairk waters, where the floating lifeboats move, there goes
up, in the white wake of her passmg, ‘one long, contmuous
moan.’

The boats that the Titanic had launched pulled safely away
from the shght suction of the sinking ship There \\ere only a
few boats that i\ere heavily loaded, most of those that \%ere half
empty made but perfunctory efforts to pick up the moaning
sivimmers, their officers and crew's feanng they would endanger
the hving if they pulled back into the midst of the dying. Some
boats beat off the freezing victims, fear-crazed men and women
struck ivith oars at the heads of swmmers One woman drove
her fist into the face of a half-dead man as he tried feebly to
chmb over the gunwale Tw’o other women helped him m and
stanched the flow of blood from nng-cuts on his face.

It was 2.40 when the Carpathta first sighted tlie green light
from No 2 boat, it was 4.10 when she picked up the first boat
and learned that the Titanic had foundered The last moaning
cries had just died aw’ay. It w-as soon afterwards, w’hcn her radio
operator put on his earphones, that the Californian, the ship that
had been within sight as the Titanic w'as sinking, first learned of
the disaster.

And It W'as then, in all its white-green majesty, that the
Titanic's survivors saw the iceberg, tinted with the sunrise,
floating idly on the blue breast of the sea.

On Thursday mght, when the Carpalhia reached her dock m
New York, 30,000 people jammed the streets, ambulances and
stretchers stood on the pier; coroners and physicians waited,
and relatives of the 71 1 survivors, relatives of the missing -
hoping against hope. The dense throngs stood quiet as the first
survivor - a w'oman - half-staggered down the gangivay. A ‘low
wailing’ moan came from the crowd, grew m volume, and
dropped again.

The Bntish Board of Trade’s investigation w'as tersely damn-
ing. The Titanic had earned boats enough for 1,178 persons,
only one-third of her capacity. Her 16 boats and four coUapsibles

136 reader’s digest omnibus

had saved but 71 1 persons; 400 had needlessly lost their lives.
The Calif orman also was damned. She had seen the Titanic* s
rockets; she had not received the CQD calls because her radio
operator was asleep.

‘WTien she first saw the rockets,* said the report, ‘the Cali- ‘
fornian could have pushed through the ice to &e open water
without any serious risk and so have come to the assistance of
the Titanic. Had she done so she might have saved many if not
all of the lives that were lost.’

SHC*

WHEN KRAKATOA BLEW UP

Condensed from Nature hdagazfne
ERNST BEHRENDT

T HE world IS awed by the might of the blasts that devastated
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there was an explosion once that
was incomparably greater. Those atomic bombs flattened two
cities, yet people a few dozen miles away were oblivious of the
fact.

When the East Indies island of Krakatoa blew up, on
i27 August 1883, the whole world knew about it. The noise was
heard 3,000 miles away. The great waves the explosion caused
in the sea reached the shores of four continents and were
recorded 8,000 miles away. An air wave generated by the blast
travelled clear round the world, not once but several times.
And where had been a mountain half a mile high was now a
hole a thousand feet deep and miles across.

Red-hot debris covered an area larger than France, to a
depth of sometimes 100 feet on land. For nearly a year after-
wards the dust of the explosion, blown upwards for 30 miles,
filled the high atmosphere over almost the whole globe. Even
though there were no large towns wthin 100 miles of the
volcano, 36,000 persons lost their lives

The biggest blast in history was caused by nothing more
mystenous than the old-fashioned force which rattles the lid on a

FtTSl publisked tn ‘The Reader’s DigesV tn 1946

WHEN KS.AKATOA BLEW UP I37

tea-kettle. But the fire under the kettle was a mile-long pocket of
seething lava and it changed a cubic mile of ocean into super-
heated steam. The lid blew off and the kettle exploded as well.

Krakatoa ivas a volcanic island of about i8 square miles in
the Sunda Strait, in the Dutch East Indies, betiveen Java and
Sumatra.

Early in the spnng of 1883, there were ^vam^ng signs. Smoke
and steam poured firom recent fissures in the rock. A river of
lava cut a wide swath through the tangled jungle. But the Dutch
in Java and Sumatra were not alarmed. Old Krakatoa had
pufied and rumbled before. Even when the Dutch Captain
Ferzenaar amved m Bata\'ia in August with a report that two
new' volcanoes had appeared on Krakatoa, the Dutch were not
impressed. There w'ere scores of\olcanoesm Indonesia; besides,
Kiukatoa w’as almost a hundred miles away.

‘The ground was so hot it burned right through the soles of
my boots,’ Captain Ferzenaar said. Well, if it was that w arm on
Krakatoa the few' natives who hved there would have to take
to their boats and wait until the island cooled off

Captam Ferzenaar was the last wlutc man to set foot on
Krakatoa before the eruption. By this time na\igation through

138 reader’s digest omnibus

Sunda Strait was becoming difficult. Several skippers turned
back when they saw the narrows covered with a foot-thick
layer of cinders. But the captain of one American freighter
battened down the hatches and calmly sailed through the
hissing sea. His cargo - kerosene!

No one after him attempted the passage. By now Krakatoa’s
rumblings had grown into a continuous, angry roar heard along
the entire east coast of Java. In Buitenzorg, 61 miles from
Krakatoa, people were seeking shelter from what they thought
was a gathering thunderstorm.

‘In the afternoon of 26 August,’ R. D. M. Verbeek wrote in
his descnption of the catastrophe, ‘the low rumbling was
interrupted by sharp, reverberating detonations. They grew
louder and more frequent. People were terrified. Night came,
but no one thought of sleepihg. Towards morning the incessant
noise was drowning out every other sound. Suddenly, shortly
before seven, there was a tremendous explosion. Buildings
shook, walls cracked, and doors flew open as if pushed by
invisible hands. Everybody rushed into the streets. Another
deafening explosion, and then everything was quiet as if the
volcano had ceased to exist.’

The volcano had ceased to exist. Seething with the expansion
of Its gases, the white-hot lava found temporary outlets in the
two craters seen by Ferzenaar, which normally acted as safety
valves. But the pressure became too great. Unimaginable energies
were straimng against hundreds of feet of solid rock overhead.
The rock heaved, buckled, on the evening of 26 August it
cracked ivide open like the wall of a defective cauldron.

"With all the fury of a pnmordial cataclysm a stream of lava
burst forth in a deafemng roar. Seconds later the ocean rushed
into the opening. On contact with the hot lava the water
changed into superheated steam. Colossal blocks of gramte
and obsidian rocketed upwards amid a cloud of dust and
smoke Again the ocean rushed in, batthng the pent-up lava,
changing into expanding, exploding superheated steam, break-
ing down barrier after barrier of rock.

No one knows how many times the white-hot magma pushed
back the ocean and how often the ocean returned to the assault.
In the end the water won. Early in the morning of 27 August
the ocean reached the volcanic centre of the island. Even the

WHEN KRAKATOA BLEW UP

139

fury of the pre\uous explosions was but a faint prelude to the
final catacl^'sm as the heart was ripped out of Krakatoa and
14 cubic miles of rock streaked upwards into the sky.

The sun was blotted out behind a curtam of ebony tom by
jagged hghtning. Miles away, Krakatoa’s pjTotechnics aued
the sailors of the Bntish ship Charles Bal, who saw the island
shoot up over the horizon, ‘shaped hke a pine tree bnlhantly
illuminated by electric flashes.’ The sea uzis covered "with
innumerable &h, fioatmg belly-up on the churning water.

Long aftenmrds came the noise -the loudest ever heard bv
human ears ‘The concussions were deafening,’ wrote Lloyd’s
agent m Batavia, a hundred miles away. They hammered everj'
ear-drum m Jam and Sumatra and put fear into the hearts of
Borneo’s head-hunters. People in Victoria Plains, Australia,
1,700 miles to the eastward, were startled by ivhat seemed to be
artiUery fire. The sound waves travelled 2,968 miles westward
to Rodriguez Island near Madagascar.

“Wfith the noise, concentric imves of air started on their way
around the globe. A day and a half after the explosion, the first
of them hit London from the west. Then a second wave rushed
over the city from the east. Four times the east-bound wave
swept over London - and o\ er Berlin, St Petersburg and
Valencia as well - and three times it swept back The strato-
sphenc seesaw contmued for more than ten da^'s before the
blast had spent its force.

Far more violent was the effect of the eraption on the sea In
Anjer, on the west coast of Ja\a, a retired sea captain suddenly
noticed a new island which had bobbed up in the strait. The
next moment he was runnmg for his life The island was a wall
of water, 50 feet high, advancing across the narroivs at mcredible
speed, battering doivn the wharves, engulfing Anjer, racing
uphill, smashmg everytlung in its path The wave flung a log
at him, and he went do^vn. Wlien he regmned consciousness he
was sitting on the top of a tree half a mile inland, stripped of
every shred of clothing but othennse unharmed.

He was one of the few who sa\v the wave and lived to desenbe
its fur}'. Anjer had vanished The ivave, rising to a height of a
hundred feet, wiped out scores of villages and killed thousands
of people On the coast of Sumatra, the wave tore the warship
Beroun from her moorings and drove her, anchor dragging, t\NO

140 reader’s digest omnibus

miles inland, leaving her stranded in the jungle, 30 feet above
sea level.

The wave raced across the entire width of the Indian Ocean,
when it reached Cape Town, 5,100 miles away, it was still over
a foot high. It rounded the Gape of Good Hope, turned north-
ward into the Atlantic, along the coast of Africa, and at last
spent itself in the English Channel.

^^^ole districts of Indonesia were buried under ashes, the
jungles were choked, the rice paddies changed into deserts. The
sky was so filled with ashes that for a time lamps were needed
all day in Batavia.

But what covered the land and the sea was only a small part
of the volcano. Most of Krakatoa’s solid rock had been pul-
vensed and blasted to a height of 150,000 feet. Clouds of
volcanic dust hung suspended in the stratosphere for months.
Air currents carried them across oceans and continents All
over the world, the rays of the sun were filtered through a veil
spun in the depths of Sunda Strait. In Paris, New York, Cairo
and London, the setting sun appeared blue, leaden, green and
copper-coloured, and at night the earth was steeped in the
light of a green moon and green stars.

The phenomenon lasted into the spnng of 1884; then the
colours faded, and Krakatoa’s magnificent shroud disappeared.
The final chapter in its history seemed to be over, ^akatoa
was utterly dead. Nothing was left of it but a few square miles
of rock buned under a mountain of ashes. All plants and insects
and birds and mammals had been dissolved in a fiery cloud.

Then a miracle happened - the miracle of the rebirth of life
Four months after the eruption, a botanist found an almost
microscopic spider, gallantly spinning its web where nothmg
was to be caught. It had apparently drifted m on the wind.

And then in a few years came the grasses and shrubs, the
worms, ants, snakes and birds. They arrived by air -seeds
dropped by birds on their flight over the barren land; small
caterpillars carried by the wind ; beetles and butterflies winging
their way over from Java and Sumatra They arrived by water -
eggs of worms and reptiles flung ashore with flotsam; snails and
scorpions riding the waves on decayed tree trunks; pythons and
crocodiles swimming across the narrows. Parasites clung to their
bodies.

WHEN KRAEATOA BLEW UP

I4I

Plants and animals came over by accident, but there %\as
nothing accidental about the sequence m which they estabbshed
themselves. It was a ngid chronological pattern telescoping
millennia into months. Some forms of life had to be there first
so that others could hve

For a while some forms prospered through the absence of
enemies and competitors. Around 1910, Krakatoa was o\errun
by swarms of ants; ten years later, when there were plenty of
birds and reptiles, the ants had all but disappeared By 1919 the
first small clusters of trees had taken root, and by 1924 they had
grown mto a continuous forest. A few years later, climbing
plants were already choking the trees to death and transforming
the new -forest into a tropical jungle with orchids, butterflies,
snakes, numberless birds and bats

Krakatoa became a naturalist’s paradise, and the Dutch
made it a nature resen'e and allowed no one but accredited
saentists to set foot on the island They worked out a complete
inventory of life on Krakatoa They counted the steadily-
growing number of new arrivals and obscnfcd how they h\ed
ivith each other and fought each other. Thc> even discovered
several sub-speaes - birds and butterflies with peculiar charac-
teristics not to be found anywhere else Krakatoa w'as not only
drawng on the forms of life around it; it was creating a life of
its OWTl.

Then, one day, the scientists discovered another sort of life
stirnng on Krakatoa. The old volcano w'as not dead.

Deep doivn under its rocky foundation a pocket of lava was
seekmg an outlet for its energies The bottom of the inland sea
W'as healing and buckling again. A submanne cone w’as build-
ing up; on 26 Januar}' 1928, it broke the surface and showed its
top, a flat, ugly island a few' hundred feet across, w'hich the
waves w’ashed away a few’ days later.

A year passed. Then suddenly a gejser began to spout steam
and ashes Sulphurous fumes drifted over the ocean Again the
sea W’as covered ivith dead fish floating belly-up

The new geyser is still there. It is a portion of the ancient crater
nm with mud deposited on its top and a flue m its centre - a safeti'-
valve for the stupendous pressure generated by the lava pocket
underneath The nati\ es call the new \ olcano *Anak Krakatoa’,
the ‘Child of Krakatoa’ No name could be more ominous.

MIRACLE UNDER THE ARCTIC SEA

Condensed from The Saturday Evening Post

GOMDR. WILLIAM J. LEDERER, USN

During August ig4g two of the U.S. Naig^'s latest experimental sub-
marines, the Tusk and Gocjiino, conducted cold-weather operations in
the treacherous Greenland Sea, 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The
subs ran just beneath the surface, using their schnorkels. On 25 August
they ran into a polar gale with high waves and strong winds. With the
ships three miles apart, the Gochino suffered a battery accident which
resulted in the generation of hydrogen, a most dangerous gas when con-
fined. For 14 hours the frozen crews fought explosions, fire and storm
Here is an account of those heroic hours, pieced together by Commander
William J. Lederer, U.S Pf., who interrogated the survivors shortly after
they returned to the U.S. Submarine Base at Kew London, Connecticut.

Time. 0801

All over the ship loudspeakers screamed the dreaded warn-
ing: ‘Hydrogen' Put out the Smoking Lamp!’ Sailors frantically
extinguished their cigarettes. A chief petty officer plunged his
pipe into a cup of coffee.

Before Gommander Rafael Benitez could issue another order
a heavy thud pounded against the bulkheads. Men jostled mto
the Gontrol Room yelhng, ‘Firel’

Acrid fumes swirled in. Benitez coughed as he said to the
Divmg Officer, Lieutenant Glifford: ‘Surface her quick! I’ll
signal the Tusk that we have a fire and are coming up.’

Time: 0803

The Cochino shot up like a porpoise, then lay on the surface,
rolling and pitching. Benitez opened the hatch and chmbed to
the weather bridge. Icy waves spouted over it, drenching him.
His teeth chattered as he searched the ocean for the Tusk. Fog
and driving ram hmited his vision. He wmced as freezing rain
and spray stung his faee.

First published in ‘The Reader's DigesT in 1950

MIRACLE UNDER THE ARCTIC SEA I43

From the intercom squa^^k-box next to him the deep \oicc
of Lieutenant-Commander Richard ^Vnght thundered. ‘The
fire’s m After Battery, Captain. Short-circuit Smoke and heat
have driven everj'one from the compartment. \Ve’\ e thro\ra in
C02 fire extmguishers I’ll be in the Forward Engine Room,
sir.’

A more serious accident couldn’t have happened Another
explosion might come any minute. As the Tusk broke through
the mist hke a ghost ship. Lieutenant Clifibrd stuck his head
' out of the hatch and yelled, ‘A lot of gu^'s are passing out,
sir!’

‘Get all hands topside - qmck*’ shouted Benitez.

Chfibrd gestured about the cramped bridge, designed to hold
seven persons. ‘There’re about 6o men foniard, sir ’

‘Get the men up here’’ said Benitez ‘Stroz'* he shouted to the
quartermaster on the bridge with him ‘Stand by to lash them
to the main deck And make damn sure you have a line on ^ ou
before you go out there.’

One by one Stroz and Bemtez pulled the gassed men - eight
of them - to the bndge and piled them m the comer. A wave
lashed over, the unconscious men stirred and groaned Chief
Hospital Corpsman Hubert Eason began appljung artificial
respiration.

As more sailors hoisted themselves out the hatch, Benitez saw
that many shivered in underclothes. Asleep off watch, they had
had no time to grab clothing He quailed at sending them out
on the freezing deck, but there was no choice. They’d last for a
few hours before exposure got them. If they remained below .
they’d die in a few minutes.

Tw'o men tended Quartermaster Joseph T. Stroz’s line as he
made his way firom the bridge to the lurching wave-swept deck
Then the stream of men followed, one at a time. Shuenng and
tense, they stood ankle-deep in water while Stroz lashed them
to the superstructure. Ever)' now’ and then the ocean raged o\ er
them.

As the men kept coming up, some braised and bleeding from
being pitched about, Bemtez selected a few to help him on the
bndge: a signalman, a telephone talker and a few* experienced
officers and chiefs. They took turns tending Stroz’s line and
spelling Doc Eason on the artificial respiration. All except one

144 reader’s digest omnibus

of those gassed had regained consciousness. Thirteen men now
crowded the bridge, 47 were lashed outside.

Time’ 0836

The ship was convulsed all over as if a mine had exploded under
her. Benitez could tell by the jolt that the guts of his^seven-
milhon dollar ship had been blown askew. Hoping that the hull
hadn’t been ruptured, he patted the knife in his pocket in case
the men on deck had to be cut loose.

The telephone talker said excitedly: ‘Captain, there’s been a
terrible explosion aft. Five men badly injured.’

* -j! *

Below, Electrician’s Mate Oscar Martinez was desperately
working the control panel in the Manoeuvring Room, trying to
locate the havoc-making short circuits. He cleared all the after
circuits, but the meters showed that the shorts still existed.
Then he saw from the ammeters that the giant Battery Three
was discharging power into Battery Four, causmgthe generation
of hydrogen. Rushing to Lieutenant-Commander Wright in the
Forward Engine Room, he shouted: ‘Sir! \Ve got to pull the
disconnects in the Battery Room.*

‘Give me the rescue breathing apparatus,’ Wright said to
Martinez, who was putting it on.

‘You’ll never get out alive, sir.’

Wright jerked the apparatus from the man’s hands, put the
mask over his face and sprang to the door. He jumped back.
The hot metal of the quick-opemng lever burned through the
heavy gloves on his hands.

A hollow boom echoed out from the Battery Room.

Grabbing the handle -tvith his burned hands, "Wright yanked
on the lever. The door opened and "Wnght fell backwards. Gas
whistled out, followed by billows of black smoke.

AVfright’s flashhght stabbed into the smoke for about a foot.
Putting his hands out in front of him, he groped towards the
switches. He saw a brilliant flash, then felt his body struck as by
a great hammer.

Long tongues of exploding hydrogen burned off all Wright’s
clothes except his shoes With almost the entire front of his body
' charred, his hands skinless, "Wright dragged himself off the deck

MIRACLE TINDER THE ARCTIC SEA I45

and painfully pushed the Battery Room door shut inch by
inch.

Above the crackhng and sisnshing of the flames, the engines
thimdered explosively. Explosive hjdrogen had got into their
fuel mixture and the Diesels were running inld The cxccssi\c
speed might cause them to disintegrate at anv moment Engine-
men ^Vllliam Pa^me and George Fedon, both badly burned,
STViftly threw the levers shutting off the fuel supply.

* al;

Listemng to reports from below. Commander Benitez appraised
the situation. Two compartments raged with flame. H\drogcn
and noxious fumes were stiU being generated m the After
Batter)'. IVith no power, the Cochino drifted hke a dead fish,
buffeted waUy-mlly by wmid and water. Fi\e men, senously
injured, were being given first-aid in the After Torpedo Room.
The amateur doctors smeared ball-bearmg grease on the bums
when the small supply of petrolatum from the emergency chest
Tvas used up. IVright was likely to die any moment. The other
13 isolated bdow' complained of headaches - some of the gas
had leaked aft. Topside, all of the gassed men had regained
consciousness. But Benitez saw the 47 men lashed to the hand-
rail around the bridge cringe w'hen another wave approached.
‘How long can they last?’ he thought.

Time’ 1 12 1

Commander Robert IVorthington, skipper of the Tusl, had
-been attempting to come alongside the Cochino^ but the wand
and sea prevented him. He had finall) succeeded, however, m
shooting a hne over, attached to a rubber raft loaded with
medical supplies. Men on the Cochino pulled the raft across the
200 yards of high w’aves

The Cochino' s radio had now' gone dead. Commander Benitez
asked Ensign John Shelton, ‘John, do ) ou think ) ou can ndc
that raft back to the Tush? They should be told w hat's going
on . . . just in case . .’

‘Yes, sir, at least I’d like to tr)'.’

Robert Philo, a chi'Iian electronics expert, spoke up, ‘He’ll
need help. Captain. I’d hke to go too '

‘Ver)' well.’

reader’s digest omnibus

146

Shelton and Philo inflated their life-jackets and sprang out
from the deck, pushing the raft before them. At once the raft
capsized and the men went under. The buoyancy of their life-
jackets shot them to the surface and they grabbed the bottom
strap of the raft. Then the line from the Tusk to the raft
tautened, and the raft moved very slowly towards the Tusk.

In five minutes they were alongside. Seaman Norman H.
Walker lowered himself into the icy sea and secured a line
about Philo’s waist. Then came a huge wave. Philo banged
against the hull and went limp. Shelton was swept about a
hundred yards away. Luckily Shelton caught on to the raft
again and he and Philo were hauled aboard the Tusk, where the
pharmacist’s mate went to tvork on Philo.

Time: 1130

Commander Worthington embraced Shelton when he got to
the Tusk's bridge. ‘You almost didn’t make it, sailor.’

Shelton grinned for a moment, then, as he gnmly began to
tell about conditions aboard the Cochino, the quartermaster
standing next to him screamed, ‘Look out on the fo’c’sle! Look
out*’

A huge wave broke over the deck, driving the men against the
life-hne. Before they regained their feet a second wave struck,
shearing off the one-and-one-half-mch steel stanchions which
supported the life-lines and sweeping all 12 men and equipment
overboard.

‘Man overboard! Man overboard!’ Worthington shouted over
the loudspeaker system. ‘Manoeuvring Room, stand by for
emergency speeds.’

Far off in the frothing sea he saw that most of the men were
holdmghands in a circle so as to stay together. Philo, unconscious,
already had disappeared.

"W hile making his first approach, Worthington saw that the
men couldn’t hold a circle any more - they were dragging each
other under. The wind and sea soon scattered them.

The Tusk approached one of the men. As he was hoisted
aboard, the signalman said, ‘Captain, the Cochino’s sending a
message by semaphore. Here it is: “we may have to abandon
SHIP.” ’

‘Acknowledge,’ said the TusKs skipper, compressing his lips.

MIRACLE UMDER THE ARCTIC SEA li/

\\’orthington •was determined to get as many of his men as
possible. For ti\o hours he frantically worked the Tusf, and
succeeded in rescuing five. Then he ordered, ‘Head for the
CochinoJ

Time: 1350

^\Tien the Tusk steamed away mto the rain, no one on the
Cochino knew that she w'as tiyang to rescue her own men. ell,*
thought Benitez, ‘w’e’ve got to stick it out somehow.’ But what
could he do^ His ship had no power. He looked at the crei\
lashed to the superstructure. Tlieir faces were blue and
impassive. They no longer even cringed as the cold water
poured over the deck. Bemtez turned to Chief Torpedoman
"Woodward.

‘Get all those men up here.*^

‘Up here on the bndge, sir?’

*Yes, we’re going to pack them m.’

So they squeezed 47 more into the space made for sc\ cn - a
large man in the openmg o\er there, a small one in the tin\
space by the bulkhead . . . you sit on his lap, Bob . . push o\ cr.
you guys, 24 more have to pile on top of \ ou

Benitez took off his jacket and sweater and ga\e them to the
coldest-looking men. ‘I canU look cold,’ he said to himself But
when he tried to stop his teeth from chattenng and his knee-caps
from jumping, he couldn’t control them

From w ay aft came a thud' thud' - it w as the cough ofspluttcr-
mg Diesels The telephone talker shouted, ‘Captain, After Engine
Room sa^-s the electncians have auxihary power hooked.’

Bemtez’s chapped face tiMsted into a smile. Xow his ship was
alive again.

Now he could get her to land 200 rmles awa\ ma\bc.

Just then a great cr\ rose from the men: ‘The Tusll The
TuskV

There she came, looking hke a black match-stick on a w hippcd-
cream ocean. The men on the bndge started joking.

Time: 1528

The two ships headed for nearest land, the Tusk leading. For
five hours the battered CocLir.o hmped and fought to maintain
her speed. She had no steering power; Torpedoman’s Mate

148 reader’s digest omnibus

Robert Davis manipulated the rudder control by hand with a
wrench.

Benitez received reports of conditions below decks. The men
in the after compartments had headaches and nausea, from
fatigue and from fumes. ‘But, Captain, we’ll keep the ship going
somehow.’ The telephone talker described how Lieutenant-
Commander Wright, although almost d>dng, had led the engi-
neers in song. ‘He couldn’t keep a tune. Captain; but when
we saw that badly battered guy trying to cheer us . He’s
sleeping now, sir. Doc gave him another shot.’

Time: 2039

Benitez felt the Cochino leap beneath him. This time the explo-
sion wasn’t muffled and contained within the ship - perhaps
the hull had split. From the schnorkel mast a column of smoke
spiralled.

The telephone talker said . ‘Captain, the After Engine Room’s
on fire and is filled with gas. It’s been abandoned.’

‘Order all hands to come topside. Signalman* Tell the Tusk
that we need help*’

Benitez looked aft. The stem had settled in the water about a
foot. Water was beginning to slop over the After Torpedo Room
hatch, the one by which the men below had to escape.

On the starboard bow the Tusk had circled to make an
approach. The distance between the ships slowly closed.
One mistake of seamanship in the heaving waves and
the boats might ram each other, perhaps sink the Tusk. In,
m she came. Benitez glanced quickly aft. The men had
started out of the hatch.

Time: 2155

Except for Lieutenant-Commander Wnght and Doc Eason,
the After Torpedo Room was empty. Water sloshed and gurgled
from one side of the compartment to the other.

The morphine hadn’t worn off and "Wright rested easily.
^Vith half-shut eyes he had watched the others climb the ladder.
‘Let’s go,’ said Eason.

Wright looked at his burned body. The fluid which had
oozed from the raw flesh had sohdified into a crust. Slowly he
lowered one leg at a time over the side of the bunk, while

MIRACLE UNDER THE ARCTIC SEA I49

holding Ws blackened arms in the air so that thc\ ^^ouIdn’t
touch anything.

Eason guided him toi%ards the ladder, supported him b\
grasping his least burned areas. Before Wright made it across
the compartment, the water xmderfoot had grown \-isibl\ deeper.

Stan^ng at the ladder, "Wright knew that no one could carr>
him up. He also knew' he couldn’t make it alone. The muscles
m his hands and legs were all burned out. He couldn’t lift his
foot to the first rung, let alone drag 200 pounds of aching bodj
up the long stretch to the mam deck

Someone shouted down the hatch, ‘Huny% Mr "Wright, or
it’ll be too late.’

"Wright thought, T’m blocking Eason’s chances ’

He looked up at the patch of grey sky - w av, w ay up - shining
through the hatch.

• ‘My God,’ he prayed, ‘I want to get out of here and so docs
Eason. Lord, you’ve got to give me a hand up the ladder.’

Suddenly, miraculously, IVright felt himself being lifted up
the ladder, his hands and feet barely touching the rungs. Half-
w'ay up, Eason gave him a shove As he stuck his head out the
hatch, a sailor dragged him the rest of the w a> .

The Tusk and Cochino were only a few feet apart, the lurching
bucking ships held together by moonng lines The onh escape
route was over a narrow', w'ct plank. If a man slipped he’d be
mashed between the hulls

Someone said, ‘Here comes Mr "W right ’ All c\cs flashed aft
They saw the grimacing ^Vnght shuffling painfulh forward, his
discoloured hands clutching the life-hne as if it w ere barbed
wire. Finally he stood in front of them and, willi effort, pulled
up the comers of his mouth. The crew realised that this man
with raw hands, with his hair burnt off, almost his entire body a
puddle of w’elts and blisters, w-as trying to gnn. Thev cheered

^Vright stepped tow'ards the teetering plank, staggered on to
It, started across The gale lifted the ships w hen he was midwav ;
but, lunging fonvard, he made the last few feet. Eager men
reached out to help him. *My hands*’ he said. ‘Don't touch my
hands.’ He faltered a bit but kept monng

The other men followed Wright’s example, running across
the plank w’hen it lay horizontal. The Cochtro listed badly now.
All the crew' had escaped except Ctommander Benitez.

F

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With the axeman on the Tusk beginning to chop away the
strained mooring lines, the sinking motion of the Cochino brought
the ships a few feet closer. Suddenly the plank stayed steady.
Every person aboard the Tusk shouted, ‘Now!’

Benitez ran across. As he reached the Tusk, the plank fell
between the ships and the Cochino’ s bow shot into the air. Then
the ship slid imder the surface for her last dive.

* * *

The next day the Tusk reached Hammerfest, Norway. After
rest and hospitahsation, both crews rode her back to the U.S
SubmarineBaseatNewLondon, Connecticut, where Lieutenant-
Commander "Wright and the other injured are satisfactorily
convalescing.

In their reports Commanders "Worthington and Benitez listed
the men whose heroism and devotion to duty they particularly
noted. Bemtez concluded his report with: ‘No doubt there were
others who inconspicuously performed deeds worthy of special
recognition. Their reward, if they feel they need any, they must
find in their own hearts - that when duty called they were not
fotmd wanting.’

THE dUEST OF OUR LIVES

I. A. R. WYLIE

If our Viking ancestors were able to revisit the scene of their
adventures, their mouths would drop agape at our material
gadgets. But they would v/onder even more, I think, at us.
^\Tiy, with every possible and to them incredible means of well-
being and security, are we so obviously and desperately distrustful
of life and of ourselves? AMiat, they would wonder, has happened
to man since he crossed ‘perilous seas forlorn’ in cockleshells in
search of unknown continents^ ^\Tiat has become of that joy
in testing his prowess against the forces of adversity?

The courage of our ancestors had its source in a matter-of-fact
acceptance of success and failure, tribulation and happiness as

FirtS ^jtlish€d tn *The TUadtr't Digaf tn 194S

THE Q.tIEST OF OUR LIVES I5I

the ordained pattern to ^^hich a man must fashion himself.
rel)ang only on his God and his own inner steadfastness. To
them life was a testing-ground. Hoiv they stood the test, how
they showed their mettle - not the number and prospentv of
their days - w'as what mattered to them. I cannot recall a single
Christian instance of smeide before the eighteenth century'. In
those times men of worth did not fly from misfortune.

^Ve, very' difierently, have been brought up in tlie tradition,
if not the reahty', of happiness and security AVe regard both as a
birthright. So that when danger and disaster overtake us \%e
either camouflage our failure by some neurosis or i\e turn to
meet the enemy’ bravely enough but i^tli a feeling of shocked
bewilderment, as though a totally unexpected and unreasonable
wrong had been inflicted on us. In the depression men who had
lost nothing but their money' threw’ themselves out of their office
■window’s

But secunty is and ahvays w’as an illusion. Life, as our
ancestors zestfully realised, is a great adventure or it is a mere
process of vegetation and decay As a fhend of mine expressed
it, T have been put here to solve problems. If I had no problems,
I could only suppose that I was not considered fit to sohe
them.’

Fortunately for us, this is still an age of limitless problems, of
very real and deadly fears Can we regain that joy in ad% enturc,
that high-hearted acceptance of its price which ga\c our pre-
decessors not only the courage to endure but to endure zcstfulh
and gallantly’? AVhat can we Icam from life that will sustain us
through new vicissitudes and through the dark ad\ enturc ahead’

A greater menace es en than the atomic bomb is, on the one
hand, the feehng that material things can satisfy our unrest and
unhappiness and, on the other, the fear of h\ing, tlic consequent
flight from responsibility’, the belief that an indiv-iduafs in-
capacity to deal w-ith this limitless, threatening universe mc} be
assuaged in mass organisation.

I shall ahvays remember the young Nazi who said to me
shortly before the war, ‘AVe Germans arc so happy’. A\ c arc free
of freedom.’ He meant that he no longer had to make liis ow n
decisions or even think his own thoughts He has, no doubt, long
since paid cruelly for his illusion.

I remember, too, the young Commimist guide in Russia who

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said to me proudly: ‘It doesn’t matter how we suffer now. One
day every Russian ■will have a car in his garage, a radio in his
home, all the food he can eat. And he’ll only have to work two
hours a w^eek for it. All our problems will be solved.’ It was no
use telling him that I had a car and radio and all I wanted to
eat - and that I hadn’t solved my problem. Or that my working
hours were my best and happiest. He wouldn’t have imdenstood
or believed me.

The mdmdual, even if he be Fascist or Communist, in the
final issue must stand alone to battle \vith himself, his personal
relations, his own suffering and death. No ‘ism’ can do our
living for us. Instead, we must accept hfe for what it actually is -
a challenge to our quality without which we should never know
of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

My oivn greatest support in h'ving is the memory of hard or
dangerous times when I have behaved manfully. One of the
most enduring of these memories was forged in a distinctly
minor setting. I remember that I was walking alongside a deep
and frozen canal with my pet puppy. Suddenly, in pursuit of
some imaginary animal, Susie shot across the canal - and half-
way over the ice broke under her. As I saw that she was about
to droivn, I knew that I had no choice. I went in up to my waist,
my shoulders, my chm; then with a final precarious plunge I
broke the ice betiveen me and the frantic httlc dog, and struggled
back with her to safety. Though I had a two-mile walk and
five-mile drive before I could get home, and my clothes were
frozen on me, I was never consciously cold nor did I catch cold.
I was exhilarated and happy as never before. Nor have I ever
lost what the incident bequeathed to me - the assurance that I
can and will nsk my hfe; that, after all, I am not so terribly
afiraid of death - or anything. To that extent I have become
safe. I know, on the other hand, that had I left my puppy to
drown I should never have been safe again.

True, hunger for stability and security is inherent in us; and I
confess that, though I may be laying down the laiv on the
subject, I myself am still a part-time "victim of the illusions I
deplore. I find myself counting over my material assets; I add
my fiiends to my sa'vings, my professional status, the years that
I may expect to live. Then suddenly, with a salutary shock, I
reahse my bank may close, my savings, such as they are, may

THE Q,UEST OF OXJR LIVES I53

*

fade into thin air, my fiiends may die. I sit o\cr this gloomy
accountmg and sweat cold fear. But presently I pull m\ \\ils
together. I slam my cheque book. I accept the \-icissitudes of
friendship and the uncertainty of my da^-s. In fact, I accept life
(‘Gad, Ma’am, ^ou'd better'* Carhle is reported to ha\e told
a lady tv ho made much the same statement.) ^\^lat can I count
on then’ The answer is simple: Mjself.

This may not seem much of an answer. But in this reckoning
I am not countmg on the ostensible ‘me’ but on someone else
w'hom in dire need I hat e found within mtsclf, a secret citadel
so deeply hidden in the jungle of daily happenings that the way
to it is often blocked or forgotten and the key to the gate
mislaid. Yet the ‘safe place’ is there. It has sheltered me before.
I can find it again. Then why’ should I be scared? Suddenlv,
lightheartedly, I am not.

like many of us, I’m not dogmatically religious But I hate
faith in God. Like Alalvoho, I think nobly’ of the human soul I
believe in it because I have experienced its reahty Sometimes
when things have gone badly I’\e found myself running circles,
like a hunted hare with the hounds and huntcre at my heels
Then, almost at my’ last gasp, I have remembered that other
self within me who is neither defenceless nor afraid The
frightened, hunted me has taken refuge in that hidden ‘safe
place’ and slammed the gates in the teeth of pursuit. The enemy
may batter at the_walls ‘Me’ he cannot get -And with that
certamty there has come over me a great peace and sense of
reintegration; I have been able to go out and meet the enemy -
often to find he was no enemy at all.

The other day some friends and I w ere discussing our d angcrous
and difficult times m relation to the Good Life. ^Vc had all had,
It seemed, the same experience* we knew* of the ‘safe place’
withm ourselv’es - but were not at first sure how we reached it.
IVe came finally to one simple, homespun conclusion. "NVe could
not reach it except we stood on the firm ground of moral
integrity’. The w’ay to the citadel was closed automatically to
the cheat, the har, the ty’rant, the self-seeker. It was closed to
us whenever we wavered from an absolute code of honour and
decency*. We betray’cd ourselves to the enemy with every un-
generous, intolerant, dishonest act. We might appear prosperous
and powerful. AVe might assume the bearing of courage and

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self-confidence as gangsters do. But at heart we should be
frightened, vulnerable little people.

I was in England after the wretched Munich Pact when the
country ran away from its moral obligations, choosing to put
material safety above spintual integrity. Never had the people
been more unhappy, bewildered and disintegrated I found
them again after Dunkirk. They had risen to the challenge.
Still free to choose safety, they had chosen the almost certain
rum of their individual hves and the total and final ruin of their
country. I have never been among a people so serene, so
proudly, cheerfully self-confident. They had stood fast in their
citadel and were safe.

The citadel is within all men and women of goodwill. To
find It is an individual quest - the most urgent, significant quest
of our lives. Once we have rejected material assets as safeguards,
which they are not, we can accept them gratefully for the real
good they can do us, sharing them with each other as fellow
pilgrims should. We can march out of our invulnerable selves,
all banners flying, to take risks, seize opportunity with strong
hands, meet change wth wilhng adaptability. We shall be often
hurt We caimot escape sorrow and pain and disappointment.
But like death itself they will have lost their sting. Our heads
may be bloodied. They will not be bowed. In a real, abiding
sense we shall be safe.

THE

MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER

I’VE MET

TOM CLARKE
Director, Argylc Theatre, Birkenhead

Harry Lauder, the famous Scots comedian and singer, was
my favourite adopted uncle. He used to visit our home twice a
year. Always on a Sunday. Saturday would bring feverish
polishing of silver and mahogany, new mantles in the gaslights,

First puhltihed in *Thc Readet^s 'Di%esff in 1951

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET I55

6xtra leaves in the dining-table. Tantalising smells floated up
from the kitchen.

Sunday itself was a day of mounting excitement, but alas, for
us kids a day of antichmax My sisters and I were hastily bathed
and packed off to bed at an early hour. Consumed wth curiosity
in our nursery at the top of the house, e could hear the v isitors

arriving: cohorts of aunts, uncles and friends, all in a jolly mood
Lastly, to a rousing welcome. Uncle Hariy' him>clf - with his
pleasant, raspy voice that sent thnlb up your spine, and his
funny way of speaking that was not casv to understand.

Shortly we could hear the guests trooping into the dining-
room. Grown-ups seemed to take for ever over a meal. As we
struggled not to fall asleep, there came to us the sound of
hearty laughter: that uould be Uncle Harry icIJing funny
stones

Then, at long, weary last, the company made their i\-ay back
to the drawing-room, and soon a fcis preliminary' chords on tiic

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156

piano banished all thoughts of sleep. Quietly we would creep
out of the nursery and do^vn the stairs, there to listen enchanted
to that gay and glonous voice

Roamin’ in the gloamin’.

By the bonnie banks 0’ Clyde . . .

Roamin’ in the gloamin’,

Wd my lassie by my side . . .

And three little heads on the stairs nodded in tune.

The friendship between Harry Lauder and my father, Denis
Clarke, began when the comedian was just starting to make his
way. In 1894 Lauder, then 23, forsook the coal mines for the
stage. His faAer had died when Harry was not yet 12, and the
lad went into the pits to support, his widowed mother and the
family. He used to sing to his mates as he worked. They
persuaded him to go on at local shows that had amateur singing
contests. In time he became an attraction and promoters paid
hiTTi as much for singing as he earned in a hard day’s work at
the coal face.

^VTten the chance came he left the mines to tour with a small
concert party, acting as baggageman, bill-poster and general
factotum, as well as doing his turn on the stage. Before long he
secured a contract ivith my father at our Argyle Theatre, in
Birkenhead. It was for the week of 13 June 1898, at four
pounds.

Harry Lauder made an immediate hit singing Insh songs.
Delighted, my father went backstage to ask him to go on again.

‘I’m sorry, but I canna do it, Mr Clarke,’ said Lauder, ‘I’ve
no more Irish songs.’

‘But surely, Mr Lauder, you make more than one appearance
in Scotland.’

‘Aye, but that’s different,’ said Lauder. ‘In Scotland, ye see,
I’m a Scots comedian, but my songs are too broad for them
doon here. They wouldna understand me.’

‘Try them*’ said my father.

Lauder went on and caused a sensation. By the next day he
was the talk of the town, and Denis Clarke signed him up on
a five-year contract. So commenced a series of engagements
extending over 40 years.

In 1900 Harry Lauder went to try his luck in London. There

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He hummed them, sang them to a dozen musical phrases, tried
to get a verse out of them. Suddenly the melody came, though
it took Lauder and a song writer several weeks to get the words
just nght. He introduced the song in Glasgow in 1905, and
every night for 13 weeks ‘I Love a Lassie’ held up the show and
called for repeated encores.

‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ ’ was introduced in New York at
the opening of Lauder’s tour in 1910. He had kept it up his
sleeve for a year before producing it. He worked on it every day,
he tried a dozen costumes before he decided how he would dress
for It. He had rehearsed it a thousand times The care was not
misspent. In all parts of the world it proved to be the most
popular song Lauder ever sang.

During World War I he suffered the great tragedy of his life.
On New Year’s Day, 1917, my parents were in London, staying
at the same hotel as Lauder. He joined them for morning coffee,
saying that his only son, John, was due home on leave, when a
page handed him a telegram. Lauder opened it and his face
went ashen grey. ‘It’s John,’ he said. ‘He’s been killed out there ’

John’s death was so crushing a blow that, at first, Lauder felt
that he could never sing or joke again. He went home to his
wife, Nance, at Dunoon, overwhelmed with grief. But his iron
self-discipline asserted itself, and three days later he returned
to London to take up his part in the revue, Three Cheers.

He went on the stage, joking and singing, until, in his
patriotic song, ‘The Laddies Who Fought and Won’, he
reached the lines ;

When we all gather round the old fireside
And the fond mother kisses her son .. .

The ordeal of singing those words was too much and he broke
down.

From this great sorrow was bom his famous song ‘Keep Right
On to the End of the Road’. Talking one day of his struggle to
carry on after John’s death, he used the phrase, ‘I’ll just have to
keep on to the end of the road’. The words stuck m his mind,
and he put them to music. The song’s message of courage and
hope brought comfort to many in sorrow.

In 1919 he was kmghted by King George V-the first
music-hall artiste to be so honoured The comedian was always

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET I59

popular wth the Royal Famfly. The first tune he Mcnt to
\Vindsor Castle to smg for King Edward Vll, he enquired
which songs tlie King would like to hear. ‘Just begin at the
beginning/ ^e court ofScial told him, ‘and His Majcst\ Mill
tell you when to stop.’

Once after a performance at tlie Palace Theatre attended b\
King George V and Queen Mary, he Mas standing outside,
bidding goodbye to a fellow arastc.

‘Good mght, George, and good luck,’ he called to his friend

The King, lea\Tng the theatre at that moment, called back,
‘Good mght and good luck to you, Hariy ’’ and stepped into the
royal car, chuckhng at the astonished look on the comedian’s
face.

In his later years Sir Harry was very proud of his knighthood
and his ambition was to go doMTi in histoiy' as a great Scot who
had done well for Scotland, rather than as a Scottish comedian
But in his early days he played the theme of Scottish thnftincss
for all It was M'orth.

The best of tlie public stunts he and his manager Tom
Vallance invented between them The first time I sum it I Mas
having coffee with Lauder and Vallance in the croMded lounge
of an hotel He sent a page for two penny ncMspapcrs, gning
him a threepenny piece. The boy handed o\cr the papers and
expecting that Sir Harry meant him to keep the cliangc.
walked away. Lauder let the lad gel half-May across the lounge
and then gave a yell that made me jump Mith fnght

‘Hey, boy’’ he called, ‘Come back'’ \\ hen the bo) M'as still
a dozen yards off, he shouted, ‘\\ hat about m) pcnn\ change’
I gave ye thruppence'’

Conversauon in the lounge ceased. All c\cs Mere upon us as
the blushing page handed oscr the copper and (led, to spread
the story far and Midc I toasted Mith embarrassment at my
first experience of this gag that in later >cars I used to lose to
see lum work; for I had learned that the Mctims of these pranl s
were later handsomely tipped -M’hcn there m.-is little chance
that the stor>* M’ould be spoiled

Sir Harrj' had sinuall} retired s\hcn IVorld War II brolc
out m 1939, but although he Mas then in Ins 70’s he decided that
It Mas his duts to entertain the troops For the next fisc \crrs.
Math lus OMTi little company of artists, he tratcllcd all o\cr

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Scotland singing to the men in camps and hospitals. It must
have been hard going for him. He wrote me' ‘I’m finding that
Scotland’s a big country, Tom, for an auld man to travel
several nights a week in the black-out.’

Harry Lauder did not entertain again in public, but nght at
the end of his career he enjoyed a tremendous surge of popularity,
when the magic of radio introduced him to a generation who
had never seen him on the stage.

In the autumn of 1949 his last illness fell upon him, and he
died peacefully in February 1950. Four days later his friends
gathered at Lauder Ha’ to bid him a last farewell. In a dank
Scots mist we drove through tike winterbound countryside to
Cadzow parish church in Hamilton.

There followed a scene that none present will ever forget. As
the coffin was borne from the church, in a whisper like a breeze
among the pines of Skye, the organ began to play ‘The End of
the Road’. The man beside me gave a little gasp. His eyes filled
ivith tears The significance of that well-loved melody drove
deep into our hearts.

Back through the crowded streets of Hamilton, out by the
giant slag heaps of the colliery where he had worked, Harry
Lauder passed on his last journey to Bent Cemetery. Around
his grave lay hundreds of wreaths, like a vast carpet of flowers,
emblems of the affectionate memory of friends in many lands.

As I stood at the graveside of my old friend, there arose in my
mind the picture of a little boy and his sisters sitting on the stairs,
waiting for Uncle Harry to sing. To how many millions, I
thought, have he and his songs brought pleasure since those
far-off days! Then the memorial card on Winston Churchill’s
magnificent wreath caught my eye. There, in eight simple
words, it seemed to me that Churchill had composed Harry
Lauder’s elegy, and as I turned away my heart echoed the
great leader’s tribute: ‘In grateful remembrance of a grand
life’s work.’

We’re getting a lot of government these days, but we’d
probably be worse off" if we were getting as much as we’re
paying for.

THEY SAW THE BIRTH OF
A VOLCANO

Condensed from The Pan American
LOIS MATTOX MILLER

Dionisio PuLiiio, a peon i\ho o\mcd a little farm m the
state of Michoacan, i8o miles i\cst of Mcxieo City, is perhaps
the only man i\ho e\er saw the aetual birtli of a \olcano - one
of Nature’s most tremendous spectacles

Late m the afternoon of Saturday, 20 Fcbruaiy 19 }3 j Dioni'^io
finished ploughing a field and stopped for a moment’s rest
Suddenly he saw a thin column of white smoke curling tin
snake-hke out of Iiis field, 50 or 60 \ards away.

Strange thmgs had been happemng on the farm that daj
said Dionisio In the early morning, tlic earth had trembled
angrily. Later, he had noticed that tlic ploughed soil had felt
unusually hot against tlie soles of his bare feet. Now , tins strange
smoke. As he went forsvard to imcsUgatc, he heard a mufiled
report, ‘like the uncorking of a huge bottle’. Tlic column of
smoke grew thicker and suddenly seemed to be dn\ cii sks^w ard
by a tremendous force. Dionisio raced back across the fields to
fetch his wife.

The Pulidos never again saw their cornfield As Dionisio
cxdtedly urged his incredulous spouse to liuny*, there was a
violent earthquake, seismographs in New York, 2,250 miles
aw’ay, recorded it. IVhcn Dionisio picked himself out of the
rubble of the hut, and looked across the fields, his cornfield was
belching fire and throwing large rocks and tons of sand ’Straight
up in the air.

By the time the Pulidos had stumbhnglv picked their wa\
o\ cr the trembling cartli to the ncarbs village of Paricutin th.''t
place, too, was a shambles. The road was filled with panic-
stricken people Blankets and shawls crammed with pcr'Onal
belongings were piled on carts Tlic priest was calling for «trong
men to carrj' aw a\ the sacred image of Our Lord of tlic Miraclc>.

Fws; fiiMvs W in rfcf I'*

161

i 62

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Nightfall never came to Paricutm, for the volcano that had
once been Dionisio Pulido’s farm now illuminated the whole
countryside, glowing brilliantly even through the dense, stifling
curtain of smoke and sulphur fumes. Leaping tongues of flame
were shooting into the sky and masses of stone, white-hot, were
being hurled a thousand feet through the air. All the while
tremendous explosions caused the ground to heave and surge.
The thunderous roar was incessant, ‘hke hundreds of cannon
firing in unison’. Clouds of fine black ashes reached roof-tops m
Mexico City, i8o miles away.

There was greater horror to come! On the third night the
volcano cone, a huge cauldron of ruby-red, belched forth its
first stream of lava. Bubbling like the melted ore of a thousand
smelters, it burst from the bowels of the earth and tumbled over
the nm, rolhng down the sides of the cone in a heavy tide
20 feet tluck and 200 feet wide, gradually turning from a dazzhng
white to a bnlhant red as it slowly travelled across the valley.

Government officials, geologists, newspapermen and photo-
graphers poured into the stricken valley. They remained for
days, studying the amazing phenomenon of a new-born volcano
in the \Vestem Hemisphere - the first since 1759.

Several times since the volcano’s birth there has been a slight
lull in the eruptions. Each tune, a tremendous explosion has
followed, terronsing anew even distant villages. The sixth time,
10 June, Pancutfn - as the new-born monster is called, after
the dead village - blew open a new major vent several hundred
feet above the original one, and started a second river of molten
lava down another valley. At first it advanced 1,000 feet a day;
a month later it had spread so widely that the edge crept
forwards only ten feet a day.

The two valleys now he buried under deep layers of lava,
volcanic rocks and ashes. Paricutfn Volcano towers to a height
of 1,200 feet above the plain and is three-quarters of a mile
thick at Its base.

As I flew towards the volcano, I first noticed its devastating
effects 75 miles away. Black ashes shroud once-green valleys
and mountainsides. Gardens and orchards have vanished. Church
spires stick up, half buned under a mountain of slag. Springs
have gone dry and the nver Cupatitzo is now a slow-moving
stream of mud.

THEY SAW THE BIRTH OF A VOLCANO 163

Soon you sec a gigantic column of smoke swirling straight
into the sky from the crater mouth, reaching the incredible
height of 20,000 feet. Every four seconds there is a new burst
of smoke, tons of rocks roar sky\vards, and a wide stream of
blazing red lava gushes upward for more than a thousand feet,
to spill over the cone’s edge into a molten mass that flows down
the side m two huge troughs.

The stifling sulphurous smoke soon sets you coughing.
The billowing smoke, flying rocks (some bigger than the
htde plane), and the flaming lava make you gasp with awe
and fear.

"We landed at the village of Uruapan, 20 miles from the
volcano. -The towm is thick with volcamc dust, which turns mto
a sticky mess w hen ram falls Roofr are sagging under the weight
of the ash v\hich accumulates faster than the villagers can
remove it. Sightseers 500 a day, crowd the place, for Pancutin
Volcano is now' officially a tourist zone.

Parangancutiro, a v'lUage which the natives prefer to call
San Juan, is at the edge of the zone Beyond there is nothing
but ash, lava, thunder, and awe The Mexican government
insists San Juan is doomed and tned to evacuate the inhabitants
Though they have to fight the ashes day and night, shovelling
and sweating, they refuse to leave. They are making more
money than they ever saw’ before, feedmg tourists, hirmg mules
and hones to them, and acting as guides

Not a green thmg, not a blade of grass, is alive m an area of
100 square imles Fifty miles away, tender crops vnther and
only the hardier grow’th, the trees and shrubs, still hves. The
disaster has brought complete desolanon to seven villages and
damage to many othen. Vegetation on the ferule farmlands
iwthen and dies w'herever the shifung winds spread a blanket
of ashes. Birds drop lifeless Scorn the skies. ^Vater is scarce, for
the sprmgs have gone dry.

The Secretary of Public Welfare sent a corps of docton,
nurses and social w orken to aid in the re-locauon of more than
8,000 people from the cuned region.

The end is not yet. Pancutin Volcano shoivs no sign of
dimimshing vigour. Terrific explosions continue to hurl great
quantities of red-hot rocks into the air to fall back and pile the
cone higher and higher; the rate of growth shows that the

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164

amount of material being spewed from its maw is as great as
ever. Lava still spurts into the sky, then falls and creeps down
the mountainside. At night, the flow looks like a waterfall of
fire. The Mexicans say, ‘Hell is still unchained.’

«2>e|C'

WHOSE BUSINESS WAS IT?

FULTON OURSLER

When a woman jumped, one summer’s day, from a high
window of the Russian consulate in New York, the crash of her
body on the pavement was heard around the world. But at that
time the world heard only a part of the truth.

No outsider knew that Madame Oksana Stepanovna
Kasenkina would never have taken that spectacular leap if a
young Connecticut farm tvife and her brother, a novice lawyer,
had not first intervened in an affair that seemed to be no
business of theirs. This brother and sister set in motion a cham
of events whose climax did more than anything else, before or
since, to bring home to the world the reality of Soviet duphcity
and ruthlessness.

Now, with their permission, the story can be told.

It begins in a country house in Connecticut, on 8 August 1948,
a sultry Sabbath mommg.

Home from early church, the family surrounded the break-
fast table, where Daniel McKeon was dividing Sunday comics
among the children. Louise, blonde young wife and mother,
scanned the New York Times. ‘A terrible thing is happening!’
she suddenly exclaimed, and read aloud from the front page.
On Saturday a 52-year-old widow had been kidnapped by
Soviet officials from an estate not far from the McKeon home.

‘Just listen to what went on'’ gasped Louise.

Ten days before, Madame Kasenkina, in the U.S. to teach
the children of Russian delegates to the United Nations, had
been ordered to return to Moscow. Her passage was arranged
on the Soviet steamship Pobeda. Instead of going aboard, she
hid herself. When the vessel sailed without her, she fled for

r tra published in 'The Readefs Digtsp tn 1949

WHOSE BUSINESS WAS IT'’ 165

protection to the home of the anti-Communist Countess
Alexandra Tolstoy, agang daughter of the great novelist
Madame Kasenkma’s purpose %vas to remain in the United
States and become a citizen But Soviet raiders pounced on her
sanctuary, and now it was feared she was being shanghaied to
Russia, to be liquidated.

These accusations were denied. According to Jacob
Lomakin, Sowet Consul-General, who was now holdmg the
woman under ‘protection’ in his New York house, he had
merely ‘rescued’ her from bondage m the household of Countess
Tolstoy. Known to ne\vsmen as a churlish fellow, the dour-
faced Lomakm was today all smiles. He protested that he wanted
everybody to know the whole truth.

Reporters crowding his office were introduced to a pale-faced
woman garbed in black, wth red rmgs around her broivn eyes
Lomakm said

‘Here is Madame Oksana Stepanovna Kasenkma. She came
ivith us %vilhngly. She wants to go to Russia.’

These assertions were obsequiously confirmed by the woman
herself. To experienced newspapermen, however, her assent
seemed only an act of terrified obedience; they noticed her
uneasy glances; her fhghtened air and plucking hands.

On that humid Sunday monung, this same ugly news story
was being read in millions of Amencan homes, yet it occurred
to Louise McKeon alone that anything should or could be done
about It.

reader’s digest omnibus

1 66

Louise, looking across at her husband, was deeply moved

‘Prisoners of Russian officials always agree with their jailers.
There are homble ways of making people do, that. I believe
that woman is really going to her death.’

‘Probably*’ agreed her husband.

‘Won’t anything be done about it^’

‘Well, after all, Aat consulate is technically Soviet territory — ’

‘WTiy don’t we do something about it?’ blazed Louise.

Dan McKeon bhnked in astomshment. A new light was
shining in his wife’s eyes, a glow of dedication. With all her
duties as mistress of a large house, mother of six children, and
with club and church duties besides, why was Louise McKeon
thus suddenly on fire? As the explanation dawned on him, Dan
smiled. This was what came of talking recently to one of their
oldest fhends - F ather J ames Keller, founder of a group known as
the Christophers, who goes about inspirmg ordinary people with
his behef that they can by selfless acts bring about extraordinary
changes m the world.

‘But what can / do?’ Louise had asked Father Keller. ‘A busy
housewife, buried in Connecticut, can’t help change the world ’

‘I don’t care if you are buried in Alaska,’ Keller had replied
‘Drop that feeling of personal futility and just try somethmg
sometime. When you do you will not be alone; the Good Lord
will be right there helping you.’

And now, on this Sunday mormng, Dan McKeon realised
that for his wife this moment was her ‘sometime’ and she was
going to try somethmg!

‘But what can you or I possibly do in a case like this^’ he
argued. ‘Only the State Department can deal with Soviet
Russia.’

‘Just the same, I’m going to do something!' cried Louise. Dan
McKeon rose and put his arms around her. ‘All right, darhng,
I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Now let’s see - what could we do^ . . .
Why not talk to your brother about it? Pete’s a lawyer. And
he’s commg up from New York today.’

Now Peter Hoguet was a very new lawyer only a year
out of law school. When he arrived at the McKeons’ home they
found that he was as indignant as they about the Kasenkina
case. However, he didn’t see that there was anything he could do.

‘But no Amencan could kidnap another American and get

WHOSE BUSINESS WAS IT? 167

away w'lth it, could he^* Louise argued. ‘Are Russians allowed
to break our laws^’

‘Sis, It’s not OUT business.’

Louise AIcKeon’s retort was a searching question: ‘Well, if
it’s not our business, whose business is ifi'

Peter Hoguet shrugged and gave no answer - then But on
Monday night as he rode the tram back to New York, the
question would give him no peace* ‘If it's not our business, then
whose business is it?' Tuesday morning he dropped in on a friend,
an experienced attorney.

‘Women get queer ideas, don’t they?’ Peter began offhandedly,
and told of his sister’s excitement. But the other man exclaimed .
‘She’s right. WTiose busmess is it - if not yours?’

From that moment young Peter Hoguet found his days a
hnng melodrama.

First he deaded to rely on a pnnciple m law older than
Magna Czxta. — habeas corpus (‘that you have the body’), which
IS the right of any citizen behewng that another is illegally
detained to brmg that person into a court of justice where the
facts may be ascertained.

On \Vednesday afternoon he offered papers to Justice Samuel
Dickstein of the New York Supreme Court alleging that a
w’oman was being held against her wtII m the Russian consulate
‘through power, deceit and terror being exercised upon her ’

So cogent were his arguments that w'hen he left he clutched
a document commanding Jacob Lomakin, Soviet Consul-
General, to be m hlanhattan Supreme Court at Foley Square at
10 a m. the folloiving morning, Thursday, and to have wnth
him ‘the body of Oksana Stepanovna Kasenkinabyyou detained
and imprisoned, as it is said.’

Now all Peter had to do was to lay hands on Lomakin, one of
the most elusive of men. He studied neivspaper photographs,
to fix in memory the image of his quarry - lean, pale face;
jutting, chff-hke brow; eyes like deep astems, almost empty of
light.

In legal etiquette a laivyer of record does not serve his oivn
summons. So Peter called a fhend, another young laivyer, Hugh
Donohue

Their rendezvous was the lobby of the Hotel Pierre at Fifth
Avenue and 6 ist Street, across the street from the stately

i68

reader’s digest omnibus

marble-front mansion occupied by the Soviet consular staff.
Almost at the instant of their arrival, as if unseen forces were
already helping, a black limousine drew up before the consulate,
and a lean, pale man \vith jutting forehead sprang to the pave-
ment.

‘Lomakin!’ cried Peter. The writ was in his pocket; no tune
now to pass it to Donohue; legal etiquette would have to go
hang. Peter ran across the street as a cluster of reporters deployed
around the Russian consul. Furious at the ambuscade, Lomakin
raked his pockets and belaboured his own doorbell; lucklessly
for him he was without a key. Peter sprang up the marble steps,
brandishing his paper.

‘Mr Lomakm'* This is a vmt oihabeas corpus for Mrs Kasenkina.’

Lomakin locked his hands behind his back. But Peter pushed
the court summons dowm inside the consul’s buttoned coat.
Lomakin seized the detested thing to throw it into the street,
and that angry act betrayed him; the order of the court was in
his hands.

‘Mr Lomakin,’ exclaimed Peter, mopping his face, ‘you are
now served. I’ll meet you in court.*

At ten o’clock next morning the youthful attorney appeared in
Foley Square. He, who had never before had a case, found himself
surrounded by cameramen. In the courtroom he assembled his
witnesses. Countess Tolstoy and her associates at the estate from
which Madame Kasenkina had been kidnapped. But where
were Lomakin and Madame Kasenkina? Would the Russian
official disregard an order of the New York Supreme Court?

’When Justice Dickstein appeared on the bench, Peter Hoguet
arose and announced. ‘Your Honour, I am ready to proceed.’

But Russia was not ready. Indeed, it looked as if Peter Hoguet
was beating his head against an iron curtain. In Washington
the Russian Ambassador, Alexander Panyushkin, had declared
that the ‘entirely inadmissible assumption’ that Lomakm could
forcibly detain Madame Kasenkma was ‘incompatible with the
dignity’ of the consular office. And the U.S. Department of
State had telegraphed suggesting that Justice Dickstein defer
further action. To this plea Justice Dickstein agreed for two
wholly sensible reasons:

(i) Word had been received from Lomakin that he needed

WHOSE BUSINESS WAS IT? 169

time to consult wth his embassy. In the interest of fair play he
was to be ^ven that time.

(2) There was needtoconsultwiththe U.S State Department
on whether Madame Kasenkma had been sent to America
under diplomatic privileges or as a mere consular employee.
That techmcal point might determine the whole issue

\Vhat the Judge did not know, nor thd Hoguet, was that a
Soviet ship ivas to sail at midnight of this same Thursday;
wthin a few hours, Madame Kasenkina was to be shipped out
Then the habeas corpus ivrit could never be enforced

Madame Kasenkina knew that she was to be a passenger on
that ship. \\Tiile Peter Hoguet stood glum and forlorn in court,
the pallid woman in the case was bemg held m a third-floor
room of the Russian consulate.

Through an open wmdow came the noises of the city cars,
trucks, the shrill voices of children in Central Park nearby.
Fantail pigeons fluttered on her ivmdow-sill, but Stepanovna
did not see Overcome wth lassitude, lost in a men^ cloud
land, she slumped in a rocking chair. She has told fnends that
she scarcely heard the music coming from a portable radio on
the bureau. If guards had suspected that Madame Kasenkina
understood a little English there would, of course, have been no
radio in the room

Madame Kasenkma’s mind had gone back to the yetir 1937.
In those dajis she was a teacher in a biological institute in
Moscow and her husband was also a saence teacher. In the
middle of night, heavy blo\vs on the front door aroused them
from sleep; Soviet troopers broke in, seized her husband and
draped him off. She never saw him again; never even learned
his offence.

From that moment Madame Kasenkma dreamed of escape
from the Soviet Union. But she had guilefully concealed her
hope as she played the role of a fanatic servant of the totahtanan
state. At last she had been brought to the United States She
had determined never to go back to Russia. Yet here she was,
trapped like an animal - and, so she believed, no one, anyivhere,
cared what happened to her.

Presently she stood up and walked to the wndow. Looking
out towards the street, she saw a sight that startled her, even in

reader’s digest omnibus

170

her misty state of mind. A crowd was staring at the front of her
prison house. Pohce had to hold them back. What had brought
all those people here^ She must try to understand, try to clear
her head. Last night a nurse had come to her bedside, thrust a
needle into her arm, spurting into her veins the narcotic often
used by Soviet pohce. Under its influence the mind of the
drugged person becomes a dream world and all resolution fails;
it was the purpose of the drug, Madame Kasenkina has stated,
to break her will.

Still blear-eyed from the dose, confused when she so des-
perately wanted to think, Madame Kasenkina swayed dizzily
towards the bathroom. She fumbled with the cold-water spigot,
bent over and splashed the chilly stream over head and cheeks
Now she began to think more clearly. Again she started towards
the window, when she heard a voice from the radio uttering her
name' What was the man saying, the newscaster with the
excited voice? Intently she listened, hearing her name repeated,
mispronounced but immistakable. She was overpowered with
emotion. A httle part, at least, of what she heard she could
translate.

There had been court action on her behalf' This news re-
kindled her xmnd and soul. Now she knew why crowds filled
the street below. She was not abandoned. Somebody had tned;
somebody did care' All those people cared'

In that ineffable moment of realisation, Madame Kasenkina
was inspired to any sacrifice that might blazon the truth un-
mistakably to the people. She turned resolutely to the open
window. Leaning far out on the projecting ledge she looked
down three storeys to the concrete pavement of a walled-m
yard. It was a moment of Gethsemane. Two floors below she
saw a telephone line strung across the court. She aimed her
body at that •wire, and jumped. The •wire, though it nearly
severed her hand, broke her fall and saved her life.

All the world knows the rest of the story. From a hospital bed
the crippled Madame Kzisenkina was a more effective witness
against tyranny than she ever could have been on a witness
stand. And with what world-stirnng results!

Consul-General Lomakin had to leave Amenca in disgrace.
Other officials were also called home. In the pillory of inter-
national news they, and the mighty Molotov with them, had

A PLEA FOR LESS ‘HAPPY’ TALK I71

been exposed as arrant liars. The Kasenldna case galvanised
world public opinion against Soviet lawlessness.

Today, Louise McKeon knows that her old friend, Father
Keller, was right; that a single individual can set far-reaching
events in motion The pattern of her brother’s life is altered, too.
Putting aside his ambition to have a pnvate practice, Peter
Hoguet has taken a Grovernment post in Waishmgton.

And Madame Kasenkma? Wounds and broken bones largely
healed, she now hves in retirement and spends her time writing
a book of her experiences. Never again can she feel alone; for
she is one in spirit -with all those who, like herself, would offer to
die that freedom may hve.

§JoK'

A PLEA FOR LESS ‘HAPPY’ TALK

Condensed from The Catholtc World
KATHLEEN NORRIS

‘The darlings - 1 hope they’re always gomg to be as happy as
they are today!’ whispers the bnde’s mother, watching her little
girl come down the aisle on the arm of the young groom.

‘I think they will be - Dick’s such a dear, and they’re madly
in love ivith each other!’ whispers back the bnde’s aunt. ‘Don’t
they look happy!’

Happy, Happy, Happy. The foolish word rules the scenes
that follow. May they ^ways be happy. We hope you are going
to be happy.

Everyone - even the most experienced of the relatives - speaks
of happiness exactly as if it were a complete, concrete thing, tied
up in one more jeweller’s box.

The novelty of it, the passion of young love, the excitement
of gifts and flattery, last for a few months, and indeed they are
happy. And then the glamour wears away, and the silver
tarmshes, and the wedding cheques are spent, and they are not
happy Not for any particular reason it has all ended - they are
like bewildered cMdren, not knowing what to do.

Ftrs^ puVished tn *The Reaier*s tn 1925

reader’s digest omnibus

172

‘We don’t love each' other any more,’ they say pathetically;
‘we are not happy!’

As if happiness were an indispensable element m married life,
Mary carries the discussion of it to the next stage, which is the
ever popular argument about the effect of an unhappy marnage
upon the children of the household. ‘Isn’t it better,’ asks Mary,
with thousands of other ghb young wives, ‘isn’t it better to
separate, with all digmty and consideration, than to have inno-
cent children brought up in an atmosphere of constant dispute
and nagging?’

The obvious answer, ‘Must there be disputes and bickerings
between decently self-controlled persons'^*’ is passed over witii
superior scorn. The voices of Marys’s friends chorus eagerly, ‘Oh,
anything is better than for children to grow up with a father
and mother who have stopped lovdng each other!’

Mary’s position now depends upon her ability to convince the
world that Dick was ^vrong and she right, and she goes to any
length to prove that no woman m the world could possibly have
lived with Dick an instant longer than she did. To save herself,
she commits herself to hate her husband, and she naturally gives
that viewpoint to his children. And this is the first ffmt of the
search for happiness.

But where did the deep-rooted superstition begin, that married
persons are going to find happiness ready-made^ Who, in this
world, has a right to it, ■without a slow, painful struggle^

^Mien a scientist shuts himself up in a laboratory for years of
research, when an explorer girds himself for a bitter trip into
torrid or frozen zones, when a child is born cnppled, and
some mother’s heart is chamed to this suffering little couch
for hfe, we do not press upon them with idiotic queries as to
whether or not they are ‘happ/. Such a question would be an
insult.

Marnage, humanly speaking, is a job. Happiness or un-
happiness has nothing to do 'with it. There never was a marnage
yet that could not be made a success, nor a marriage yet that
could not have ended in bitterness and failure.

So much good, so much bad, in the husband, the •wnfe, the
house, the children, the income, the town, the friends, the
health and the assets generally of the new social unit. A little
more hardship this year with which to contend, a little less next

A PLEA FOR LESS ‘hAPPY* TALK

173

year And at the end of 15 years, 20 years, success A developed
and ripened soul, taught where to find happiness, not expecting
to gather it out of the air.

All marriages are ahke - and for that matter all hves are
alike - in that the wife and husband seem to experience disap-
pomtment in its hardest guise. The domestic, book-loving wfe
finds herself mated to a pleasure-loiang man whose amusements
are aU away from home. The baby-loving woman finds to her
endunng grief that they ivill never have a child The youthful
little enthusiast for jazz and dancing is burdened in her early
2o’s with a third, a fourth, baby. The proud ivoman blushes for
an easy-gomg unsuccessful mate.

And that is marriage. And hfe.

Each and every one of us has one obligation, dunng the
beivildered days of our pilgrimage here - the saving of his own
soul; secondarily and inadentally thereby affecting for good
such other souls as come under our influence.

Happiness has nothing to do with it. And in these days, when
divorces and separations and unhappy mamages are almost
universal, it behoves us to gird ourselves for a stronger position
on the question, and to disunite the words ‘marriage’ and
‘happiness’ once and for aU. Mamage is a great means of grace,
rather than of shallow human joy.

Speaking from a purely human standpoint, there is no modern
institution so completely and dramatically a failure as the insti-
tution of divorce. It is w'orking hke a sort of hate factorj- in our
midst, creating enmities and silences and coldnesses in a world
that for 2,000 years has been struggling to lessen the sickemng
total of them. Its cruelty to innocent childhood is proverbial, its
effect upon society is rmnous, and the thousands of embittered
women it sets adrtft upon our commuiuties every year are a real
menace to sober, self-controlled Ghnstian hiong.

Each of these divorced women wants above all other things
to tell you just how WTonged and how angehc she W'as, as a wife.
If love is an essential attribute of heaven, then surely haters an
attnbute of hell, and I have never felt so close to the latter place
as when in the company of the divorced woman who is obhged
to hate violently and incessantly, or admit that she herself was
at fault.

Committed to a marriage vow, assisted mysteriously by grace,

reader’s digest omnibus

174

how peaceful it may be, on the other hand, to be obliged only to
love and to endure' In sickness rather- than health, poverty
rather than riches, for worse rather than better - until death.
The bitter was foreseen, as well as the sweet, and there is no
weaklmg argument involved, as to whether one is happy or not.

We know, we older persons, that the motor cars and wedding
presents and trips and admiration and excitement are only
will-o’-the-\visps that the children quite naturally chase for a
few giddy years. Surely it would help them to find the true
secret if we dropped the consideration of ‘happiness’ from our
own problems, and from theirs, where the big things of life are
concerned, and gave them to consider instead the thought that
real happiness must be made, not found, and that the materials
right in their hands at this moment are its ingredients.

"Which is perhaps only to glimpse the truth of the words : ‘The
kmgdom of heaven is within you.’

THE DISCOVERY OF ANAESTHESIA

Condensed from Hygeia
HUGH H. YOUNG

In comparison with surgical anaesthesia, all other contributions
to medical science are trivial. Before anaesthesia, surgery was a
horror! Surgical operations were dreadful ordeals, a hell to the
patients, a purgatory to the surgeons. The frightful shrieks from
the hospital operating rooms filled those waiting their turn in
the wards ivith terror.

The awful experiences of operative surgery and the attendant
high mortality caused the best minds in medicine to avoid
operations. Indeed, for centuries many major operations in
Europe were left to itinerant quacks, and in England the barber
surgeons did the work while the medical profession stoold by
and vainly tried to assuage the anguish of the patient.

Since the beginning of medical Hstory our records show that
the never despairing hope of physicians was to conquer pain

Ftra published in 'The lUadei's Digesf m 1926

THE DISCOVERY OF ANAESTHESIA I75

and thus be allowed to carry out surgical procedures \Mth
tranquil thoroughness rather than in a mad rush against pain
and death.

‘Sacred, profane and mythological hterature abound m inci-
dent, fact and fancy shoivmg that since earliest times man has
sought to assuage pain by some means of dulhng consciousness,’
says Gwathmey. ‘In these attempts many methods and diverse
agents have been employed. Ihe inhalation of fumes from
various substances, weird mcantations, the external and internal
application of drugs and many strange concoctions, pressure on
important nerves and blood-vessels, magnetism and mesmensm,
etc, have played their part in the evolution of ana:sthesia.’

Mandragora was used by both Greeks and 'Romans for
hundreds of years to produce sleep, and Asiatics employed
hashish to dull consciousness of pam. Later, opium and hemlock
were used.

It was not until the early chemical discoveries of hydrogen,
mtrogen, oxygen and nitrous oxide in the latter part of the
eighteenth century that the way was found for a scientific
anaesthesia. Sir Humphry Davy said, in 1800, ‘Smce nitrous
oxide is capable of destroying pam it may be used in surgical
operations,’ and 25 years later Hickman anaesthetised rabbits
ivith mtrous oxide and carried out many operations on them
successfully ivithout a struggle. However, these demonstrations
were unheeded, and the surgical theatre continued to be a
torture chamber.

But nitrous oxide and sulphuric ether, neglected by the
medical profession, were seized on by the populace, who found
m them a pleasaint means of becoimng exhilarated. Itinerant
lecturers on the mairvels of chemistry roamed over the country
and populauised their meetings by giving young people ether to
breathe, while the audiences roared with laughter over their
unconscious antics on the stage.

Knowledge of these drugs reached even to the distant rural
hamlets. In one of these, Jefierson, Georgia, many miles fi-om a
railroad, Craivford ^V. Long was practismg medicine. Fresh
fixim the University of Pennsylvania, he knew of the exhilaratmg
properties of these drugs and firequently furnished ether to
young men who met at his office for an ‘ether frohc’ in the
winter of 1841-2. But let him tell his story:

176 reader’s digest omnibus

‘They were so much pleased with its effects that they after-
wards used it frequently and induced others to do the same,
and the practice soon became quite fashionable in the county.

‘On numerous occasions I inhaled ether for its exhilarating
properties, and would frequently, at some short time subsequent
to its inhalation, discover bruised or painful spots on my person,
which I had no recollection of causing and which I felt satisfied
were received while under the influence of ether. I noticed that
my friends, while ethensed, received falls and blows that I
believed were sufficient to produce pain on a person not in a
state of anaesthesia. On questioning them they uniformly assured
me that they did not feel the least pain from these accidents
Observing these facts, I was led to believe that anaesthesia wais
produced by the inhalation of ether, and that its use would be
applicable in surgical operations.

‘The first patient to whom I administered ether in a surgical
operation was James M. Venable. It was given to Mr Venable
on a towel, and when fully under its influence I extirpated a
tumour on his neck. The patient continued to inhale ether
during the time of the operation, and, when informed that it
was over, seemed incredulous until the tumour was shown him.
He gave no evidence of suffering dunng the operation, and
assured me, after it was over, that he did not eiqierience the
least degree of pain from its performance. This operation was
performed on 30 March 1842.’

Here, then, was the first successful attempt to render a patient
insensible to pain during a surgical operation' Long did not
rush into print, but hke a painstaking scientist quietly con-
tinued his work, removing another tumour on the same patient
a few weeks later, and then amputating a toe under complete
ether anaesthesia in July. His meagre practice furnished him
only a few surgical cases each year. He continued to operate
under ether, while he bided his time, waiting for a major opera-
tion before publishing his claims to a discovery that he well
realised would revolutionise surgery.

In 1896, I chanced to meet Mrs Fanny Long Taylor, who
amazed me by saying that her father was the discoverer of
surgical anaesthesia. I had heard only of Morton, in whose
honour, as the discoverer of anaesthesia, a great celebration wais
in prepairation in Boston. I waw thrilled when she said she could

THE DISCOVERY OF ANESTHESIA 177

put Dr Long’s documentary proof in my hands, and a few da^'s
later I went through his time-stained papers, case histones,
account books, aflSdaxTts from pauents, attendants, phj'sicians
in his to%vn and elsewhere in Georgia, and from professors of the
University of Georgia, all which lunched ovenvhelrmng proof
of the originality of his discovery.

Jackson and Alorton umted m claiming the discover)' in 1846,
Morton admitting that he got the idea from Jackson. kVells then
came forth with his claim of ha\'ing used nitrous oidde in 1844
hlorton and Jackson subsequently fell out, and Dr Jackson,
hearing of Long’s claims, visited him in Georgia to investi-
gate them, and then generously wrote a long letter to the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal setting forth in detail the
genuineness of Dr Long’s claims

The next years ivitnessed a sad spectacle of htigation and
controversy between the rival Neiv England claimants for a
bonus from Congress for the discovery of anaesthesia In this
Dr Long took no part, but a presentation of his documents by
Senator Dawson of Georgia promptly killed the bill to give
Morton $100,000.

That the general! usage of ether in surgery came after the
surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital had operated
on persons anaesthetised by Morton in October, 1846, no one
will gaiinsay But in this epoch-makmg discovery there is surely
glory enough for adl. No true friend of Long would tr)' to
behtde the great achievements of Morton and his surgical co-
workers in Boston from which world-wide recognition of the
possibihty of surgical anaesthesia caime.

CALLING ALL DOCTORS

Dr Maurice Ernest of London, founder of the Centenaunan
Club designed to help people reach 100, believes m
thoroughly enjo)Tng life. His favourite stoiy is about the
man who w’anted to be a centenanan and was ad\’ised by
his doctor to give up drinking, smoking and w'omen.
‘■Will I hve to be 100 then?’ asked the patient
‘No,’ said the doctor, ‘but it will seem like it ’

LINCOLN GOES TO GETTYSBURG

Condensed from Redbook Magazine
CARL SANDBURG

When Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania set aside 19 Novem-
ber 1863, for the dedication of a National Soldiers’ Cemetery at
Gettysburg, the only invitation President Lincoln received to
attend the ceremonies was a printed circular.

The duties of orator of the day had fallen on Edward Everett.
An eminent figure, perhaps the foremost of all American classical
orators, he had been Governor of Massachusetts, Ambassador
to Great Britain and President of Harvard. There were four
published volumes of his orations- His lecture on Washington,
dehvered 122 times in three yearn, had in 1859 brought a fund
of §58,000, which he gave for the purchase of Mount Vernon
as a permanent shnne.

Serene, suave, handsomely venerable in his 69th year, Everett
was a natural choice of the Pennsylvania commissioners, who
gave him two months to prepare his address. The decision to
invite Lincoln to speak was an afterthought. As one of the
commissioners later wrote. ‘The question was raised as to his
ability to speak upon such a solemn occasion, the invitation
was not settled upon until about two weeks before the exercises
were held.’

In these dark days Lincoln was far from popular in many
quarters. Some newspapers claimed that the President was
going to make a stump speech over the graves of the Gettysburg
dead as a pohtical show. Thaddeus Stevens, Republican floor
leader in the House, believed in ’63 that Lincoln was a ‘dead
card’ in the pohtical deck. He favoured Chase for the next
President, and hearing that Lincoln and Secretary of State
Seward were going to Gettysburg, he commented. ‘The dead
going to bury the dead.’

On the day before the ceremony a special train decorated
with red-white-and-blue bunting stood ready to take the

Ftrst publtshed tn ‘The Reader’s DigesC tn 1936

178

LINCOLN GOES TO GETTYSBURG I79

presidential party to Gettj'sburg INTien his escort remarked that
they had no time to lose, Lincoln said he felt like an lihnois man
who was going to be hanged, and as the man passed along the
road on the ivay to the gallom, the croiids kept pushing mto
the way and blocking passage. The condemned man at last
called out: ‘Boys, you needn’t be m such a hurry; there won’t
be any fun till I get there.’

Reaching Gettysburg, Lmcoln was dn\en to a pnvate resi-
dence on the pubhc square. The sleepy little country towm was
overfloAvmg. Private homes were filled wTth notables and nonde-
scripts. Himdreds slept on the floors of hotels Bands blared till
late in the night. 1\Tien serenaders called on the President for a
speech, he responded. ‘In my position it is sometimes important
Aat I should not say foolish thmgs ’ (A voice: ‘If you can help
it.’) ‘It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say
nothing at all Behe^^ng that is my present condition this e\cn-
mg, I must beg of you to excuse me from addressing you further.’
The crow’d didn’t feel it was much of a speech They went next
door with the band and blared for Sew’ard
Beset with problems attendant on the conduct of the w^ar,
Lincoln had had httle tune to prepare his address. About ten
o’clock that night before the ceremony he sat dovsTi m his room
to do more w'ork on it. It was midnight or later when he went
to sleep.

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At least 15,000 people were on Cemetery Hill for the exercises
next day when the procession from Gettysburg arrived afoot
and horseback. The President’s horse seemed small for him. One
of the commissioners, riding just behind the President, noted
that he sat erect and looked majestic to begin iwth, and then
got to thinking so his body leaned forwards, his arms hung hmp
and his head bent far down.

The parade had begun to move at eleven, and in 15 minutes
it was over. But the orator of the day had not arrived. Bands
played till noon. Mr Everett arrived. On the platform sat state
governors. Army officers, foreignministers. Members of Congress, -
the President and his party.

WTien Edward Everett was introduced, he bowed low to
Lincoln, then stood in silence before a crowd that stretched to
hmits that would test his voice. Around were the wheatfields, the
meadows, the peach orchards, and beyond, the contemplative
blue ridge of a low mountain range. He had taken note of
these in his prepared and rehearsed address. ‘Overlooking these
broad fields now reposing from the labours of the waning year,
the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of
our brethren beneath our feet, it is wth hesitation that I
raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and
Nature.’

He proceeded: ‘It was appointed by law in Athens — ' and
gave an extended sketch of the manner in which the Greeks
cared for their dead who fell in battle. He gave an outline of
h'ow the war began, traversed decisive features of the three days’
battles at Gettysburg, denounced the doctrine of state sovereignty,
drew parallels from European history, and came to his perora-
tion quotmg Pericles on dead patriots: ‘The whole earth
is the sepulchre of illustrious men.’ He spoke for an hour
and 57 minutes. It was the effort of his life, and embodied the
perfections of the school of oratory m which he had spent his
career.

"When the time came for Lincoln to speak he put on his steel-
bowed glasses, rose, and holding in one hand the two sheets of
paper at which he occasionally glanced, he delivered the address
in his high-pitched and clear-carrying voice A photographer
busded about with his equipment, but before he had his head
under the hood for an exposure, the President had said ‘by the

LINCOLN GOES TO GETTYSBURG l8l

people and for the people’, and the nick of time -vvas past for a
photograph- The ten sentences nere spoken m five minutes,
and the applause was merely formal - a tribute to the occasion,
to the high office, by persons who had sat as an audience for
three hours.

That evemng Lincoln took the tram back to ^Vashington.
He was weary, talked httle, stretched out on the seats and had
a wet towel laid across his forehead. He felt that about all he
had given the audience was ordinary garden-variety dedicator)'^
remarks. ‘That speech’, he said, ‘was a flat failure, and the
people are disappomted’.

Much of the neivspaper reaction is-as more condcmnatorj'.
The Patriot and Union of nearby Harrisburg took its fling: ‘The
President acted wthout sense and without constraint in a
panorama that was gotten up more for the benefit of his party

than for the honour of the dead We pass over the silly

remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are
wilhng that the veil of obh\Ton shall be dropped over tlicm and
that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.’ And the
Chicago Times fumed. ‘The cheek of every Amencan must
tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-
w'aterj' utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to
intelhgent foreigners as the President of the Umted States.’
"Wrote the correspondent of the London Times, ‘An^Thing
more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to
produce ’

A reporter for the Chicago Tribune, how'e\er, telegraphed a
prophetic sentence : ‘The dedicator)' remarks of President Lincoln
will hve among the aimals of man.’ The Philadelphia Evening
Bulletin said thousands who would not read the elaborate
oration of Mr Everett W'ould read the President’s few' words,
‘and not many will do it ivithout a moistemng of the eye and
a sw'eUing of the heart’. And a writer in Harper’s. Weekly ‘The
oration by Mr Everett w'as smooth and cold. . . . The few words
of the President w'ere from the heart to the heart. They cannot
be read, even, without kindhng emotion “The world will little
note nor long remember w'hat w'e say here, but it can never
forget W'hat they did here.” It was as simple and felicitous and
earnest a word as w'as ever spoken.’

Everett’s opinion of the speech, written m a note to Lincoln

G

reader’s digest omnibus

182

the next day, was more than mere courtesy. ‘I should be glad if
I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of
the occasion in two hours as you did m two minutes.’ Lincoln’s
reply: ‘In our respective parts you could not have been excused
to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to know
that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a
failure.’

SMS

CHAPLAIN COURAGEOUS

Condensed from Collier's
Q^UENTIN REYNOLDS

There had been 12 ‘General Quarters’ during the night but
no enemy planes had got through, and now the dawn had sent
the Japs scurrying back to their bases on Okinawa and Kyushu.
March ig looked like just another routine day for the big Essex-
class carrier U.S.S. Franklin, rolling along 53 miles east of
Shikoku, on Japan’s doorstep. At 7 a m., fighters zoomed ofiFher
deck for a strike at Kobe, and then the whole ship was quiet.

Everyone felt pretty secure. The ship was in the midst of a
huge task force. American air-combat patrol circled above
Thirty Helldivers warmed up on the big flight deck.

Captain Leshe E. Gehres stood on the bridge with his air
officer and his navigator, peering at a low-hanging cloud bank.
Down in the wardroom Lieut.-Commander Joseph Timothy
O’Gallahan, the Catholic chaplain, was having breakfast wath
a few officers. The padre was a dark, shght-built man with the
face of a perennial altar boy.

Then it happened. It was 7.07 a.m. There was no warning -
just an explosion that shook the ship and, before the sound had
died away, there came another, so qmcUy that it might have
been an echo.

What had happened? No one in the wardroom knew. But
Captain Gehres, up on the bridge, knew. He saw a single-
engined Judy flash out of the cloud bank, diving at 360 miles an

First ptAltskii in 'The Header's DigesP tn 1945

CHAPLAIN COURAGEOUS

183

hour. It came over the boAvs of the Franklin at 75-foot height,
dropped one 500-pounder near the deck edge, siv-ung around the
island, and dropped another aft. As the skipper said later, ‘It
was a Jap pilot’s dream.’

It was ommously qmet now -for 30 seconds. No one knew
that the quiet was merely the prelude to the most \aolent tragedy
in the history of the U.S Navy.

The first bomb, slicing through steel plate to the hangar deck,
exploded among fuel tanks and planes. The second, landing m
the midst of planes warming up on deck, blew them against one
another, threw turning steel-bladed propellers against fuselages
Flame and a heavy biUow of smoke covered the planes and the
men and the deck.

Commander Edwin Parker, who had just taken off m his
Corsair, banked sharply, got on the tail of the Judy, let go a
burst, and the Jap splashed. But he had done his work verj' well
mdeed.

For now the merciful interlude of 30 seconds was gone Under
the flight deck, the flames reached the bombs and the rockets,
and It was as though the world had come to an end The
explosion lifted the huge Franklin and spun it sharply to star-
board. A burst of flame 400 feet high leaped out of the deck
edge. The explodmg flight deck burst upwards m a dozen places
Huge rockets went off with weird swooshes, zooming through
the holes in the deck high into the sky like giant Roman candles.

The planes that were aft now began to bum fiercely. Hot
bombs tore loose from them and rolled about. Ammumtion belts
went off like firecrackers. Men lay stunned all over the flight
deck. Men lay dead on the hangar deck.

The CIC (Combat Information Centre) on the gallery deck
burst upwards in a tremendous explosion, hurlmg the men m it
against the steel overhead. Every man there died instantly,
except Lieut. W. A. Simon, the only one wearing a helmet.
Close by, in the ready room, a dozen pilots died mstantly. Fifty
tons of stored bombs and rockets tore the Franklin's guts apart,
50 tons of ready ammunition drilled through her decks. Twelve
thousand gallons of gasoline burned fiercely mside her. The
skippers of the cruisers and destroyers for miles around watched
and winced as they saw the Franklin racked by 31 major
explosions.

reader’s digest omnibus

184

Father O’Callahan tried to make his way aft to the flight deck
where the wounded were. He was met by barriers of flame and
twisted metal. He knew how much dynamite and gasoline the
ship earned, and that it was probably only a few minutes before
the ship would be blown sky high He knew and he accepted
the prospect of death calmly.

Groping his way through comdors heavy with smoke, he
reached a group of frantic men trying to climb through a hatch-
way to the deck. They were jammed in the hatchway, shocked
numb.

‘One at a time, boys!’ Father O’Callahan called cnsply, and
when they recognised the authority in his voice some of the
tenseness left them and reason returned. ‘Take it easy. One at a
time,’ he repeated, and one by one they hoisted themselves
through the hatchway.

Every man on the ship sharedsomething with Joseph Timothy
O’Callahan. He talked their language, and they knew he was
their friend When you got into trouble he was always there
with a word in your defence. Besides, he was somehow more
than a cleric. He played poker %vith you and he wote songs for
the band and in port he’d have a glass of beer with you. ‘He
only beheves in two things,’ they’d say, ‘ — God and the enlisted
man.’

Meanwhile, Commander Joe Taylor, second in command of
the ship, was trying to find his way to the bridge. The flight
deck aft was a j'ungle of debris and bodies; the smoke was so
thick ‘you could eat it and spit it’. Taylor dropped to the deck
and crawled, using the deck seams as guides. Finally he found
the island, scrambled up and tumbled over the side of the
bridge Gehres greeted him. ‘Your face is dirty as hell, Joe,’ he
said.

By now every ship in the task force was figuring out some
way to help the Franklin. Carriers had sent their fighters up to
protect the stneken ship* the billowing smoke could be seen
40 miles away -almost to the Japanese mainland. The cruiser
Santa Fe and the destroyer Miller had come up and begun to
play hoses on the flames.

Gehres asked the Miller and Santa Fe to take off the senously
wounded and the whole air group aboard. These men must live
to fight from another ship.

CHAPLAIN COURAGEOUS 185

As Air Admiral Davison left he said to Gehres, ‘You’d better
prepare to abandon ship ’

‘If \ou’lI give me an air patrol and surface support, I think I
can save her, sir,’ Gehres said. Admiral Da\ason shook hands
and nodded.

Now the Franklin was dead in the water and had a 14-dcgree
list to starboard. She drifted away fi’om the Santa Fe, but the
cruiser, commanded by Captain H. C. Fitz, turned about and
crunched hard and fast against the sagging side of the Franklin.
‘Greatest bit of seamanship I ever saw,’ Gehres said.

The explosions kept coming. A magazine containing five-inch
shells blew up. But Fitz, on the bndge of the Santa Fe, ignored
them and ignored the debris, including whole aircraft engines,
that sprinkled his ship.

From the bridge, Gehres saw Father O’Callahan manning a
hose. Exhausted men numb from shock lay on the deck, but
when they saw the padre ivith the white cross painted on his
helmet they chmbed to their feet and followed him.

Hot bombs still roUed about the deck If the heaiy stream of
the hose hit the sensitive noses of the bombs they would explode.
So O’Callahan directed his hose at the deck a foot from the
bombs and sprmkled and sprayed them, keepmg them cool even
though fires raged near them. The smoke was bad. Men could
stand only a few minutes of it They w’ould fall back gasping, and
O’Callahan would cry for more men. He seemed made of iron
Gehres said after\^•ar^ that ‘O’Callahan is the bravest man I’\c
ever seen in my life ’

Fire threatened a five-inch magazine below', loaded with
shells O’Callahan saw the danger and rushed into the maga-
zine, calling for men to follow. Heat had blistered the paint off
ammo lockers, and heavy, greenish smoke poured out. The
padre w'et down the lockers and the shells, and then helped
carr\ the stuff out and dump it overboard.

Flaming gasohne sluiced down the sloping deck, floating
flames that licked e\eiyAvhere. O’Callahan turned his hose on it
and swept it overboard. The fight to surxive went on.

One of many who waged the battle was Lieut. (3 g.) Donald
Gan. a former petty ofiBcer who had sened 30 3 ears at sea
Gar) knew tliat many men were trapped m the messroom on
the third deck aft. He ivalked through fire and water and blast

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reader’s digest omnibus

to reach it - how, no one knows. In the messroom were 300 men.
There were four entrances to the room. Three of the steel doors
had been sprung by the heat and blast. The other exit was
seeimngly blocked by fire, but Gary got through.

‘Form a chain!’ he shouted. ‘Each man grab another man
and follow me. Come in groups of 20.’

Gary’s small flashlight made no impression in the thick
yellow smoke that filled the passageways. But he found a
ventilator trunk. He led the men to it, removed the grate, got
inside and began to climb. The men followed him and ivitW a
few minutes lay gaspmg on the flight deck. Gary went back
many times. He brought every one of the 300 men out to
safety.

Now, by transferring water and oil from starboard tanks to
port, the ship was brought almost on an even keel. Captain
Gehres decided to accept a tow from the cruiser Pittsburgh, and
30 men on the Franklin began to haul in the eight-inch rope.
Ordinarily this would be done by winches, but therq was no
power.

‘Yeave . . . Ho . . . Yeave . . . Ho,’ the men chanted as they
hauled. The huge rope slackened and tightened and slackened
and tightened, and every time it tightened a few extra precious
feet came aboard.

^\Tien everything was secured, the Pittsburgh began to tow
slowly. At least the Franklin wouldn’t be a sitting duck when
Jap planes came over. Most of her guns were out of commission,
even if the men weren’t too busy with the fires to man them.

Gehres noticed one 40-mm. battery that hadn’t been touched.
But could he spare the men to man it^ Gehres sometimes thinks
aloud. His 19-year-old Marine orderly, Wally Klimcieivicz,
heard him thinking out loud now.

‘Begging the Captain’s pardon, but may I have permission to
man the battery?’ Klimciewicz said.

‘'WTiat do you know about 40-millimetres?’ Gehres asked
impatiently.

‘I’m a Marine, sir,’ Klimciewicz said.

‘All right. Marine Go ahead.’

The orderly scrambled down and half an hour later Gehres
saw him ivith seven other men at the battery. Klimciewicz had
gathered two cooks, one gunner’s mate, a yeoman, two buglers

CHAPLAIN COHS.AGEOUS 187

from the band and another Marine orderly - and none too soon.
Far above the honzon, black puffs dotted the sky. Enemy planes
were coming in. The puffs blossomed closer as nearby ships
began to fire.

Then a Judy dived at the Frarikhn Klimdeiricz’s 40’s popped
at her. The makeshift crew had to shift the gun by hand; the
electrical controls were out. The Judy, commg at 300 miles an
hour, was a himdred yards from the ship ivhen she sueri'ed
sharply. The 40’s had hit her, just enough to make her lose
control She dropped a bomb and missed the Franklin by ao
feet. KlimcieiMCz and his makeshift crew had sa\ed the ship
from a hit that undoubtedly would have been fatal.

T^vice dunng the afternoon Jap planes made desperate efforts
to get at her. But now the whole fleet was fighting to save this
amazing ship that refused to die, and more than 40 Jap planes
were ’splashed’.

Father O’CaUahan still fought the fires, indefatigable after
ten hours of it. The heat was so mtense that the steel itself
seemed to be blazing. But the padre walked through smoke and
fire wth his hose, emerging unscathed. Men began to beheve
that if you were ^s•ith him you were safe.

Noiv and then he would pomt to the bridge. The bulk)' figure
of Gehres leaned over the rail. iNTien the wind blew the smoke
away you could see him, and Father O’Callahan would crj'out.
Took at the Old Man up there! He doesn’t look ivorried, does
hrf Don’t let him down!’

After dark Gehres received a report that Japs were approach-
ing m large numbers He grinned. He felt by now that his ship
was indestructible. As Commander Taylor put it, ‘a ship that
won’t be sunk, can’t be sunk.’ He was right ‘Jap planes had
been given the position we’d been at six hours before,’ Gehres
explains ‘But had been toued 40 miles since then. They
went to that position, dropped flares, didn’t sec us - and returned
home.’

The night wore on, and Gehres breathed easier. He lighted
a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘^Vatch that butt, Captain It’s
“darkened ship”, ’ a respectfhl \oice said.

Gehres tossed the cigarette overboard automatically and then
looked to see i\ho had the temerity to reprimand the skipper. It
i\’as Wally ‘I’m-a-Marine’ Klimcieiricz. Gehres smiled. This is

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a good crew, he thought, a great gang to have along when
you’re in trouble He tried not to think of the dead.

The engineers below decks had stuck by their stations,
although many had dropped unconscious in the 130-degree
heat By mid-morning they managed to turn over the engines,
and Gehres could throw off the tow.

Men on ships all around the Big Ben — as her crew affec-
tionately call her -yelled when they saw the battered giant
moving along under her own power, her flag snappmg from her
mast. They’d seen this ship blazing from dozens of fires. They’d
expected her to take the final plunge any minute, yet here she
was, a bit lopsided, smoke still coming from her hangar deck
and through 20 jagged holes in her flight deck - but moving.
She was alive.

There had been more than 3,000 men aboard the Franklin the
mormng of 19 March. Now 1,496 were dead or wounded or
missing - the most tra^c casualty list ever sustained by a U.S.
Navy ship. Since the ‘unnecessary personnel’ had also been
removed, just 704 officers and men brought the Big Ben to Pearl
Harbour. Today each man has a card of membership in the
‘704 Club’ -the most exclusive club in the world, whose
members brushed elbows with death and shoved death
aside.

At Pearl Harbour every admiral in Hawau waited at the
dock to pay his respects to the Franklin, every ship in the harbour
saluted her. Men looked unbelievingly at the huge holes in her.
Thirty Waves had volunteered to sing the welcome song of the
islands - ‘Aloha’ - and their clear voices rang out in i^ plaintive
strains.

The Franklin slid to the dock. The crew was draivn up smartly
on deck. Yes - even the 270 slightly wounded. The girls looked
. . . they faltered . . . they broke down, and their song died. No
one could look at this stricken ship without breaking down.
No one but her own crew.

It was Father O’GaUahan who started it, and the whole crew
took it up. Up on the bridge Gehres nudged Joe Taylor and
grinned as these men who had returned from death sang
lustily

‘The Old Big Ben, she ain^t what she used to be.

Ain’t what she used to be ’

■he loved me trdev

A.. "OKO.HV

beRNADIKE ,B,h.Bb front scat or the

T- «« u

«Srfor most ."Shtnere headed north

DeceniDci „ reckon k u

towards to^ ““J^inake the all the way from

for she as the son i „^„ed on horscbacK, a ^ ^jne

That mo^8 ^ „^,e do™ ^T^m’s -fe had

parsonage The p ^ , borro%sed

Johnston, had *j^orJcs and _d- her household

ChSr shadon m Sarah-s

hrm^ng back a nets rn

^ » Tii^SSf *"

igo reader’s digest omnibus

steady blue-grey eyes when she thought about that. Maybe
they’d feel she didn’t belong.

A raft ferried the wagon across the half-frozen Ohio River.
The air sharpened; the wheels sank to their hubs in snow. After
five days they came to a log cabin in a small clearing on Little
Pigeon River. It had no windows, and the door was only a
deerskin-covered opemng. A stick chimney plastered with clay
ran up the outside.

Tom hallooed and a little boy ran out of the door. He was
thin as a scarecrow, and wore a ragged shirt and tattered deer-
skin pants. But it was the look in his eyes that went to Sarah’s
heart, although it was a look she couldn’t put a name to. She
got down from the wagon, opened her arms like a couple of
wings, and folded him close.

T reckon we’ll be good friends,’ she said. ‘Howdy, Abe
Lincoln.’

She had never been in the wilderness before; she had known
small-to\vn comfort This was a one-room cabin, with no real
floor, only packed dirt. The bedstead was a makeshift of boards
laid on sticks against the wall, with a mattress of loose com-
husks. The bedcovers were skins and cast-off clothing. Ten-year-
old Abe and his 12-year-old sister had always slept on piles of
leaves up in the loft, to which they climbed by pegs fastened
to the wall. The furmture was some three-legged stools and a
table axed smooth on top, bark side under. Dennis Hanks, an
1 8-year-old cousm of Tom’s first wife, Nancy Hanks, was living
with the family and had been trying to cook with the help of a
Dutch oven, one battered pot, and a couple of iron spoons.
Although she must have expected a place far better than this,
all Sarah said was, ‘Tom, fetch me a load of firewood. I aim
to heat some water.’

This new stepmother with the rosy face and the bright curly
hair wasted no time. As soon as the water steamed, she brought
out of her o^vn belongings a gourd full ofhome-made soap. Then,
in front of the hot fire, she scrubbed Abe and his sister and
combed their matted hair \vith her own clean shell comb. When
the wagon was unpacked, little Abe, who had not said a word,
ran his bony fingers over such wonderful things as a walnut
bureau, a clothes chest, a loom and real chairs. And that night,
when he went to bed in the loft, he did not find the leaves; she

*HE LOVED ME TRULY* igi

had thrown them outdoors. He had a feather mattress and
a feather pillow, and enough blankets so he w’as warm all
mght

In a couple of weeks, a body wouldn’t have kno\\Ta the place.
Sarah had what folks called ‘faculty’; she worked hard and she
could make other people work, too. Even Tom, who meant well
but was likely to let things shde She never said he must do thus
and so; she w'as too ivise and too gentle. But somehow Tom
found himself making a real door for the cabin and cutting a
%vmdo^v, like she wanted. He put do^vm a floor, chinked up tlie
cracks betiveen the logs, whitewashed the inside walls Abe
couldn’t get over how sightly it \vas And she wove Abe shirts
out of homespun cloth, colouring them with dye she steeped
out of roots and barks She made him deerskin breeches Aat
really fitted, and moccasins, and a coon-skin cap She had a
mirror and she rubbed it bright and held it up so’s he could sec
himself- It was the first time he had ever seen himself- and he
said, ‘Land o’Goshen, is that me?'

Sometimes, in the early mornings, when Sarah laid a new lire
in the ashes, she got to thinking it was queer how things come
about WTien Tom Lincoln had courted her, 14 years ago, she
had turned him down for Daniel Johnston Tom had been 12
years married to Nancy Hanks, who died so sudden from the
‘milk sick’. And now, after all these years, Tom and she wxrc
together again, wdth his children and her children to feed and
do for.

The cabin was 18 feet square and there w’cre eight people
under its flimsy roof Sarah w'as taking what was left of two
households, along with the orphan boy, Denms Hanks Some-
how' she must make them into a family of folks who loved each
other, she w'anted them to feel hkc they had alwa^'S been
together. There w’as plenty of chance for trouble, what with the
two sets of young’uns w’ho had never laid eyes on each other
till now, and all the stories Abe and his sister had heard folks
tell about stepmothers. Those first weeks, Sarah felt mighty
anxious. Especially about Abe, though he did what she said
and never answ'ered her back. Once she saw' him looking at her
real serious when she w'as putting some johnnycake into the
oven. ‘All my hfe I’m goin’ to like johnnveake best,’ he said
suddenly, and then scooted through the door. You couldn’t

102 reader’s digest omnibus

figure Abe out. As Dennis said, ‘There’s somethin’ peculiarsome
about Abe.’

Maybe, if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have lived to
be a man. He had always grown so fast and never had enough to
eat. But now, when he had eaten enough johnnycake and meat
and potatoes that were cooked through and not just burned on
top, he stopped looking so pinched and putty-coloured. And
he wasn’t so quiet any more. Now he had some flesh on his
bones, he wasn’t solemn. Why, he was fuller of fun than any-
body. He learned to tell yams, hke his father, but he tried them
out on Sarah first, and she laughed m the right places. She
stood up for him, too, when he’d laugh out loud, all of a sudden,
at things nobody else could understand, and Tom thought he
was being sassy. ‘Abe’s got a right to his own jokes,’ Sarah
said.

Sometimes Sarah thought, all to herself, that she loved Abe
more than her own children. But she didn’t really. It was just
that she knew, deep down in her heart where she told nobody
but God, that Abe was somebody special, who didn’t belong to
her but was hers to keep for a while.

When Abe was little, Tom hadn’t minded his walking nine
miles to the ‘blab school’ where the scholars learned their letters
by saying them over and over out loud. But now Abe was older
and stronger, Tom didn’t see why he shouldn’t stay home and
chop down trees and cradle wheat or hire out to the neighbours
for husking com at 30 cents a day. Of course, he felt kind of
proud when the neighbours came to have Abe write their letters
with the pen he had made out of a buzzard’s quill and the
bner-root ink. But Abe was ‘reachin’ too fur’ when he kept
reading books instead of clearing swamps; Tom told Abe you
didn’t need to know so almighty much to get along.

If Sarah hadn’t taken Abe’s part against his father, Abe
wouldn’t have got as much schooling as he did, though goodness
knows it wasn’t much. He learned, as the folks said, ‘by littles’.
But through the years she held out against Tom, no matter if
Tom said she was plumb crazy

Abe would rather read than eat. He’d read in the morning,
soon’s It was light enough to see, he’d read in the evening when
the chores were done; he’d read when he ploughed, while the
horse was resting at the end of the row. He walked 17 miles to

‘he loved me truly’ 193

borrow books from La\\-\er Pitcher at Rockport. Fables.

Robinson Crusoe. Pilgrim's Progress. Shakespeare. The Statutes of
Indiana. "WTien his borrowed \Veems’ Life of Washington got
rained on, he worked three full da^'s to pa^ for it. Once he
gave a man 50 cents for an old barrel and found Blackstonc’s
Commentaries at the bottom of it, and \ou’d think he’d found a
gold-mine. He began reading late at night by the fire, and when
Tom complamed, Sarah said, ‘Leave the boy be.’ She alwajs
let him read imtil he quit of his own accord, and if he fell asleep
there on the floor she would get a quilt and wrap it gcntl)
around him.

He did his ciphenng on a board, and when the board got
too black, he’d plane if ofifand start agam. If he read something
he liked a lot, he’d write it down He was alwa\'s wnting, and
w'as most always out of paper. He’d put charcoal marks on a
board, for a sign of what he wanted to write, and when he got
paper he’d copy it all down. And he’d read it out loud to Sarah
by the fire, ^ter Tom and the rest had gone to bed ‘Did I
make it plain’’ he always asked her. It made her real proud
when he asked her about his wnting, and she answered him
as w’ell as anybody could who didn’t know how to read or
wnte.

They told each other things thev told nobod> else. He had
dark spells when nobody but she could make him hear. Spells
when he thought it w'as no use to hope and to plan Abe needed
a lot of encouraging.

In 1830, Tom decided to look for better farmland in Illinois,
and the family moved to Coles County on Goose Nest Prainc
There Abe helped his father build the tivo-room cabin where
Sarah and Tom were to spend the rest of their In cs. The place
W’as hardly built when the day came that Sarah had foreseen,
the day when Abe would leave home. He was a man grown,
22 ) ears old, and he had a chance to clerk in Denton Offut’s
store over in New’ Salem. There was nothing more she could do
for Abe, for the last tunc she had bra\cd out Tom so’s Abe
could leam; for the last time she had kept the cabin quiet so’s
Abe could do his reading.

At first he came back often, and later on, after he got to be a
lawyer, he \*isited Goose Nest Prainc twice a \car. E\cr} time
Sarah saw- him, it seemed like his mind was bigger Other folks’

194 reader’s digest omnibus

minds got to a place and then stopped, but Abe’s kept on
growing. He told her about his law cases, and, as time went on,
he told her about his going to the state legislature and his
marrying Mary Todd. After Tom died, in 1851, Abe saw to it
that she didn’t want for anythmg.

When she heard Abe was going to Charleston for his fourth
debate with Stephen A. Douglas, she went there, too, without
saying a word to Abe. It would be enough - it had always been
enough - just to watch him. She was one of the crowd on the
street as the parade went by. There was a big float drawn by a
yoke of oxen, carrying three men sphtting rails, and a big sign,
‘Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, the Ox Driver, the Giant Killer’
Was that her Abe? And now here he came, riding in a shiny
black carnage, and tipping his tall black hat right and left. Was
that her Abe? She tried to make herself small, but he saw her
and made the carriage stop. Then, right in fi-ont of everybody,
he got out of the carriage and came over and put his arms
around her and kissed her. Yes, that was her Abe.

She wasn’t the crying kind, but she cried when he was elected
President. Alone, where nobody could see her. In the winter of
1861, before he went to Washington, he crossed the state to see
her, coming by train and carnage in the mud and slush to say
goodbye. He brought her a present, a length of black alpaca for
a dress; it was really too beautiful to put the scissors into; after
Abe went, she’d just take it out and feel of it once in a while.

Abe looked tired, and he had a lot on his mind, but they had
a fine talk. Even when they were silent, they still said things to
each other, and he still set store by what she thought. When he
kissed her goodbye, he said he’d see her soon, but she knew
somehow that she would not see him again.

Four years later, they came and told her he was dead. The
newspapers wrote the longest pieces about his real mother, and
that was like it should be, but some folks came and asked her
what sort of boy Abe had been. And she wanted to tell them, but
It was hard to find the words. ‘Abe was a good boy,’ she said.
‘He never gave me a cross word or look. His mind and mine,
what little I had, seemed to run together.’ And then she added,
‘He loved me truly, I think.’

Often, during the four yeeu-s that remained to her, she would
sit of an evening and think of Abe. Being a mother, she did not

‘we have with us tonight — ' 195

think about him as President, as the man about whom tliey sang.
*AVe are commg, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
strong.’ She remembered him as a little boy. She was baking
johnnycake for him; she was wea\Tng him a shirt; she was
covering him with a blanket when he had fallen asleep o\ cr his
books, trying, as long as she could, to keep him safe firom the
cold.

♦ ♦ *

Sarah Bush Lincoln tvas buned beside her husband m Shiloh
Cemetery- Her death, on 10 December 1869, passed unnoticed
by the nation. For many years she was not even mentioned bv
historians and biographers. Not until 1924 were the graics of
Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln marked with a suitable stone.
More recently, their Goose Nest Praine home site has been
made into a state park, with a reproduction of the tv\o-room
cabin w'hich Abraham Lincoln helped to build. And only in the
last few years have Americans come to know that, is hen
Abraham Lincoln said, ‘All that I am I owe to my angel
mother,’ he was speaking of his stepmother.

‘WE HAVE WITH US TONIGHT ’

Condensed from The Rolarian
DALE CARNEGIE

Y ou have been imited to make a speech, and have come to me
with perplexing questions. I’ll try to answer them.

‘Shall I accept (he tnvtlafion?’ Yes. It will be a lot of fun, and
prove one of Ae most thnlhng expencnces of y our life. Indeed,
if I were you, I w'ouldn’t even wait for an imitation to make a
speech. For the good of my soul, I’d seize the first opportunity'
to make one voluntarily - and every* legitimate opportunity
thereafter: ofiice conference, club meeting, church gathering.
Parent-Teachers meeting. For pubhc speaking is a sure w ay* to
leadership. I know* hundreds of men who have created more
prestige by one five-minute talk than they had by fi\c years of

Ftni in *Thd SASi/f t Dtgesf in I'JSS

reader’s digest omnibus

196

gnnding work Once successfully master an audience with a
short talk and thereafter you’ll be a better master of yourself

You won’t make a brilliant speech. But don’t let that worry
you. Few people do. If you doubt me, turn on your radio, or
listen to the talks in House or Senate Washington

'But I never faced an audience in my life. I’m afraid I’ll faint.’ Oh,
no, you won’t. Dunng the past 24 years, I have watched 10,000
busmess men and women face audiences for the first time Only
one fainted. Of him I prophesied right then that wthin a few
weelcs he would actually enjoy talking in public. He did. He
continued to meet with a public speaking group twice a week
after that for years.

Of course you will be nervous at first Everyone is. Bryan was.
So were Theodore Roosevelt and Mussohni and Lloyd George.
But there are certain things that ^vlll help you develop courage
in advance. One is practice. Practice. Practice. WTiere^ Any-
where. When I was riding horse-back to college out in Missoun
years ago, I used to go out m the bam and practice my talks to
the horses and fhghtened pigeons. Talk to friends about the
points you are going to discuss. Call in the neighbours and
practice on them. Talk to any available group that will hsten.

Don’t imagine it is going to be difficult. You could make a
good talk right now if somebody knocked you down. You have
frequently made good talks at home when you were mad.
Remember the heat and force and colour you put into your
talks then. All you have to do is to release that same intensity of
feeling before an audience. Good public speaking is merely
enlarged conversation. Nothing more.

Remember nothing is holding you back except your,own
thoughts. So stop thinking of yourself. Think of your subject,
your audience. ‘Do the thing you fear to do,’ said Emerson,
‘and the death of fear is absolutely certain.’

'What shall I talk abouPl Talk about what interests you - from
pouter pigeons to Julius Caesar, speak with enthusiasm and you
are sure to interest your audience. I have seen that happen
thousands of times. I know a man who could hold you and 5,000
other people spellbound by talking about his hobby of collecting
Onental rugs. You may know more about catfish or cyclones or
cleaning fluids than anyone else in the audience. If so, that may
be a good topic for you. Don’t try to get a topic out of the.

HAVE WITH HS TONIGHT — ■’ I97

newspapers or the encyclopedia or a book of speeches Dig \ our
topic -or, if 7 our subject is assigned, 7 our approach -out of
your own head and heart.

‘How shall I prepare?’ That question takes us nght into the
secret chambers of good speaking Three-fourths of the success
of your talk will depend on whether or not you are adequately
prepared. Most speakers ivho fail do so because the> wouldn't
take the time to prepare. Harr>' Emerson Fosdick, one of the
most eloquent speakers m America, used to say that it took him
10 hours to prepare a lo-mmute talk and 20 hours for a
20-minute talk.

You can stand up right now' and talk about some childhood
exploit or how you got started in business or the most cxating
adventure of your life. You ha\e h\ed through these things The
secret of preparation is to investigate your subject so thoroughly
that it becomes for the time being as intimate a part of you as
these vivid experiences Suppose, for example, >ou ha\c been
asked to talk on the subject, Ts the public honest?’ First, sit
down and check up your own experiences. Then go to the
merchants in your towm who do credit business and ask them
for their expenences Ask your local dentists and doctors. If
there is a Better Business Bureau in your towm, interview' the
manager. ^V^te the National Association of Credit Men asking
w'here you can find matenal. Go to >our public hbrar). Spend
an hour of preparation for ever)' seven seconds you expect to
talk. Get ten times as much matenal as >ou can use. You will
then have an inner urge, a conviction - and your talk will
almost make itself.

‘Shall I memorise my talk?’ No> Never* If you do, >ou arc likch
to forget, and the pangs of inflammatory rheumatism seem mild
in comparison with the agonies endured by the speaker who
suddenly forgets his ‘canned’ speech. But even if you do remember
your talk, you wall be thinking of words, not ideas Conse-
quently, you w'lll have a far-away look in your ej es and a far-
away sound in jour voice The whole performance wall lack life,
colour, mtimacy. No one wall pay much attention to it.

But if you think out what you arc going to saj - think it out
over and over again, make a few notes and then trust to .-Mlah
to give you the words jou need -v our performance wall be
human and natural. True, your talk may be crude in spots.

ig8 reader’s digest omnibus

your phraseology may be awkward, you are almost certain to
leave out some of the things you intended to say; but what you
do say will get over far better than a memorised oration.

‘What gestures shall I make^’ As far as the audience is con-
cerned, it won’t be necessary to make any gestures. But gestures
will helpjoK to Jet yourself go. I use lots of gestures while speak-
ing, especially when I am talking on the radio. I need them to
help me warm up before the imresponsive mike. In the same
way, you can force yourself to speak with enthusiasm before an
audience by merely forcing yourself to make any sort of emphatic
gestures. But don’t plan them in advance. Don’t let any elocu-
tionist drill you to gesture with graceful curves in front of a
mirror. Remember you are trying to instruct, entertain or move
an audience to action. A speech is a psychological process, not a
physical exhibition of grace, and you should no more be think-
ing of gestures than of words. You ought to be thinking only
of your ideas, your message and your audience.

‘Shall I put my hands in my pockets'^' Theodore Roosevelt did,
and so did Wilham Jenmngs Bryan. Of course, the best place
for your hands is at your sides. They look well there, and
they are in position to gesture easily when the urge comes.
But if your hands feel hke a bunch of bananas hanging at
your sides, your mind won’t be free and easy. And the con-
dition of your mind is far more important than the position
of your hands. So put your hands in your pockets if that
gives you more ease. You are trying to make something
happen in the other man’s head and heart. If you can do that.
It doesn’t matter what you do with your hands.

‘How shall I deliver my talk? Speak sincerely, from the heart.
You may make blunders, but you can hardly fail to make an
impression. The most difficult problem I face in traimng men is
to blast them out of their sheik and inspire them to speak with
genuine earnestness. That is probably the most important rule
in dehvery. Your audience must feel that you know what you
are talking about, that you mean it and have an intense desire
to tell about it.

‘How can I tell whether I am being heard}' WTien Abraham
Lincoln made, at Cooper Union in New York, the famous
speech that he afterwards said made him President, he posted
a fnend in the back row ivith instructions to signal with his

POP S BOY

199

cane if Lincoln couldn’t be heard. Not a bad idea for vou.
Remember, vour \oice can’t carrv unless ^ou ha\e plcntv of
air in your lungs So breathe deeply. Don’t talk to the people
in the front row. Talk to the people in the back row. Think
your voice into the rear of the room Speak wth cncrg\.
Open your mouth. You don’t have to shout. E\en a \shispcr,
when made correcdv, tviU cany to the back of a large
theatre.

'Shall I telljuni}} stories^' No' By the beard of the prophet. No!
In the whole realm of speechmaking, humour is the most diffi-
cult thing to achieve- If \ou aren't a natural humorist - if -j ou
tiy to be funny -you may easily fail. And if you fail, ^ou wall
only afflict your audience with pity and embarrassment.

'How long shall 1 talk?’ George Horace Lonmer once told me
that he alw'ays stopped a senes of articles in The Saturday Evertng
Post w’hen they were at the peak of their populant^ . That is a
good time to stop a talk, too- Stop when people arc eager to
have you go on. Stop before they want ) ou to. Lincoln made
the most famous speech in the world at CJcm-sburg, and he did
it with ten sentences and spoke less than fi\c minutes Unless
you are veiy much better ffian you think you arc, and unless
your subject is extremely important, you had better not take
more than twice as much time as Lmcoln took

s.

POP’S BOY

Cordensed from Fight Stones
IRVIN ASHKENAZY

In the small hours of a dark September morning I dropped off
the truck that had brought me as far as the north Florida tow n
of Lake City. Going into an all-night limch-room, I let my
suitcase drop and ordered a sandivich.

The only other patron was a gaunt, elderly man eating a
bowl of soup. An unkempt fringe of grejing hair grew down his
neck beneath the floppy brim of his ancient Panama. He stared

r***? tsleJ tH *Tht KesStr s 1 ** 1^9

200

reader’s digest omnibus

at me a moment and a smile flickered as he noted the University
of Florida labels on my suitcase

‘Don’t I see ya in St Augustine one night last spring?’ he
asked. ‘You win the state amachoor heavyweight title.’

I nodded, a little surpnsed.

The old man paused, then added thoughtfully, ‘ Ya don’t
have them scars over ya eyes then.’ I’d turned pro, I told him.

‘Ya quit school?’

‘No, I turned pro in order to stay in school.’

After a while the old man swung off his stool. ‘If you’re goin’
to the University,’ he suggested, ‘I can take ya I’m goin’ through
Gainesville.’

As his old car rattled down Highway 41, Pop strung anec-
dotes about the pugilistic giants of yester-year. He’d trained
and managed fighters since 1910. He was now retired ‘in a way’,
but at the moment was helping a promoter by looking for a
heavyweight to fight Kayo Billy Terry in a ten-round main
bout at Tampa the next evening. Terry’s scheduled opponent
had broken his hand in training the day before.

After a silence Pop said, ‘That moniker of yours — ^what is it,
Polack?’

No, I told him, it was Hebrew. Right out of Genesis.

For a long while he stared ahead into the darkness, stonily
silent. Always it was the same, I thought. Tell ’em you’re a Jew,
then wait . . . wait while doors close silently.

‘I useta wonder,’ Pop soliloquized, ‘what I’d a done if I’d a
been bom a Jew.’

I’d never encountered this reaction before. My heart suddenly
warmed. Why, I told him, he’d have been exactly the same.

He shook his head. ‘Naaa I’da had to fight harder to get
along. I’da had to have an edjucation. Like you. I’da amounted
to sump’n, maybe.’

By now the darkness was becoming diluted with dawn. I told
Pop, a little uncomfortably, that I wasn’t actually stopping at
Gainesville. I would hitch a ride from there to h-Iiami ‘I thought
you was goin’ bark to school,’ he said.

I was, but first I had to collect some money from a man
named Wilhe. He was pay-off man for a manager who had
taken me with his stable of fighters on a barnstorming tour. At
the close of the tour Wilhe had disappeared. I had about

pop’s boy

201

$500 coming to me Miami was Willie’s home territon, and if
he wasn’t there I’d ivait for him, picking up fights to keep
myself going.

‘Forget It,’ Pop said gruffly. ‘Charge it off to cdjucation.’

If I didn’t get that money, I said, I wouldn’t get any educa-
tion I needed $300 to pay off my debts from the prc\*ious year
so I could get started this year.

Another silence. Then, ‘\Vho’d ya fight this summer?’

I mumbled a few names

‘Ya didn’t fight them? Them’s all tough, main-go bo^'sl’

I explained how the barnstorming manager had matched
me m ten-round main bouts from the start, endowing me witli
a mythical record m selling my prowess to promoters.

‘The louse'’ Pop muttered. ‘Throwin’ m a green amachoor
ivit’ gu>'s like those' You stay the limit wit’ any a them monkei s'”

I drew a dog-eared sheaf of newspaper clippings from my
w'allet. Pop nearly wrecked the car tiying to drive and read at
the same time ‘I’ll be damned,’ he muttered to the windshield.
‘Ya ivm ’em all'* After a few moments he turned to me *Stav
over in Tampa and I’ll put ya m against Tcrr>' tonight' You’ll
get your 300 fish'’

♦ * *

Pop’s landlady, a little white-haired woman, glanced at Pop
with an odd, anxious sadness ‘Is he the one to fight Bill) she
asked.

‘He’s my boy,’ Pop said brusqudy. She gave me something
to eat, tlicn I went to Pop’s room and hit the hay.

IVhcn I w’oke up, the bedroom windows were filled with
night. A stocky, bagg>-eyed little man was bent o\cr me, his
fingers plucking expertly at the muscles in my legs. ‘This is
J. D., my trainer,’ Pop explained J D., it turned out, also dro\ c
a cab

^Vhlle I was dressing I told Pop that the last I’d heard of
Terr)* was a couple of rears before. He’d been pretty good I
wondered what he'd done since.

‘He’s disgraced the name he’s fightin’ under,’ Pop said
bitterly. ‘Tonight he’s min’ to make a comeback. .\11 that
means is he’s gonna try to win because nobod) 's paiin' him to
la) down'' INlien I asked if he could still fight if he wanted to.

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reader’s digest omnibus

Pop nodded slowly. ‘He might have been heavy%veight champ,
if he’d listened to me — I must have shown my surprise. ‘I
useta manage him,’ Pop said gruffly.

♦ * »

A mounting roar swept through the walls of the dressing room.
‘The semi-final’s over,’ J. D. commented. Pop threw an arm
across my shoulders and said, ‘This boy you’re fightin’ is good.
He can hit and he can box. But he does his trainin’ in dance
halls and gin-mills. Hold him for six rounds and he’s through'
But until then - watch it' He’s tncky and he’s dirty.’

As I moved out at the clang of the bell, Terry charged across
the ring m a concentrated assault, designed to crash through a
mediocre defence by power and surpnse. I stepped back, half-
crouching, and caught everything on arms, gloves and shoulder.
I let him come, moving in a circle When he closed in I tangled
his arms without clinching, allowing him further to spend his
strength in savage attempts to maul me inside.

After that imtial flurry Terry knew that I was no amateur
Awareness of that fact must have awakened a sickening despera-
tion in him. He needed a win so badly.

Suddenly a blinding constellation of agony burst in my
brain. He’d thrust his thumb in my eye. I hunched against the
ropes, unable to see, while Terry’s brain-ratthng blows jolted
against the back of my head and smashed down on my kidneys
I managed to fall mto a clinch. Another galaxy of stars exploded
as Terry pulled out with a vicious butt of his head to my brow
Then the bell clanged.

Pop vigorously protested the foul to the referee, but the
referee only shrugged. Apparently he hadn’t seen it.

During the second round, with Terry husbanding his narrow
margin of endurance and me waiting for it to trickle away, the
fight became static. The crowd began to stamp in metronomic
disapproval. Suddenly Terry rushed me, thro\ving a barrage of
leather. I back-pedalled, but he closed in, seizing my arms at
the elbows. Locked face to face, he snarled, ‘Fight' Ya yeller
Jew'’ And he spat full m my face.

For a jagged splinter of time I could only stare. Hatred had
never found a place in my emotional pattern of battle. Fear,
perhaps But never person^ hatred. I flung him from me, clean

pop’s boy 203

across the ring he went, into the ropes - and bounded off them
as I came charging in

Next thing I knew, I lay upon a cloud, floating in space. I
heard a distant voice say, *SixI’ At the sound of it, tlic cloud
suddenly perufied into hard canvas. ‘Sc\enr At ‘Eight*’ I
managed to scramble to one knee, and at ‘Ninel’ I was on m\
feet. I spat the fragments of a shattered tooth and felt the sharp,
quivering pain of a naked nerve.

Terry moved in swiftly, striving for the finishing blow. I
smothered his attack, turning so that his back was finally on tlic
ropes. Letting my full 220 pounds sag against him, I dragged
turn savagely along the strands, knowing thej'- were burning
broad, crimson welts across his back. In close, I stamped on his
feet, w'liile the referee strove to break us. The punches I was
pumping into Terry had little shock power, but I was striking
wdth the heels of the hand instead of the knuckles, and the
glove laces left raw places with eveiy' blow. W’hen the referee
managed to crash between us I struck on the break, deliberately
missing, but following through so that my elbow smashed,
apparently accidentally, into Terry’s face. He staggered, and
as I charged in again jerked up his knee m such an obnous foul
that the crowd broke into a howl But I half-turned, catching
his kneecap on my thigh, my left following through in a hook
that cracked against Terr)'’sjaw He plunged to the floor.

I chmbed through the ropes, hardly w aiting to hear the end
of the count. It gave me a moment’s pause, however, to see Pop
move suddenly into the rmg, lift Teny’ in his arms and drag him
to his comer.

Pop and I w'cnt to a little restaurant aftcn%ards. He looked
very tired as he gave me a roll of notes. I counted $300, then
peded off S75 and handed it to him. ‘What s that for?' he
asked I told him it w'as his 25 per cent, the regular agent's cut.
He pushed the money towards me. ‘You don’t owe me nothin’,
son.’

Presently I said: ‘I’m sony' I had to fight dirt\ . You saw what
he did ’ Pop nodded He wasn’t looking at me
‘You figure on graduatin’’”

I told liim I guessed so. surprised at the question
‘You graduate Make sump’n of youndf’

J D. humed up and said to Pop, ‘IVe’U just about make the

204 ' reader’s digest omnibus

Gainesville bus Ain’t ya cornin’ to the station with us?’ Pop
just sat there. ‘Tell ya the truth,’ he sighed, ‘I’m kinda beat up,’
I grasped his hand. ‘So long, Pop - and thanks a milhon.’

At the bus station J. D. shook my hand. ‘Pop’ll git busy and
line up another bundle of easy cabbage for ya pretty soon ’ I
told him that tonight’s ‘cabbage’ may not have been easy, but
it was certainly the fastest three hundred I’d ever made. J. D.’s
baggy eyes for a moment were baffled. Then a sad smile glim-
mered. ‘Ya don’t have to put on no dog with me, boy. I seen the
promoter give Pop the 130 bucks for your 20 per cent of the
gate.’

Before I could go into the subject further, the bus burst into
a roar. J. D. shoved me aboard.

Next day I wrote Pop, asking him about the $170 he must
have produced for me from his own pocket. I couldn’t remember
the address of his boardmg -house, so I sent it care of the arena
I wrote him twice more, but all my letters were returned
marked, ‘Not here’.

Two months later I received a wire from J. D. offering me a
Tampa main-go. He met me at the bus station and burned me
into ffls cab. ‘How’s Pop?’ I asked.

J. D, paused in mid-motion. ‘Didn’t ya know? Pop’s dead ’

I felt as though someone had kicked me in the stomach.

I asked him when it happened and he said, ‘The next
mormng, after ya went back to Gainesville. His landlady found
him m bed, dead.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Just gave out, I
reckon.’

It was a moment or t^vo before I could speak again. ‘Did Pop
have any family?’

‘Just fflat one kid,’ J. D. said.

‘What kid?’

J. D. looked at me sharply. And, as he absorbed my bewilder-
ment, a curious expression came over his doleful face.

‘Didn’t ya know? Billy Terry was Pop’s son.’

Amenca’s best buy for a nickel is a telephone call to the
right man. Ilka Chase.

til*

CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTOR

Condensed from Ladies' HoT,e jcurral

JOHN' BARRYMORE

After the opera on a night in April igoS, m San Francisco I
went to a supper part)’, and beti\ccn three and four ^^alkcd
home ivith a friend to his house. I had been in bed onh a feu
minutes uhen the earthquake - the first and great shock -
occurred. It all but threu me out of bed. I put on m) c\ cning
clothes again and mv friend and I walked tou-ards tou n E\ cr\ -
uhere uhole sides of houses uerc gone The effect was as if
someone had lined the streets uith gigantic, open-front dolls’
houses. People ucre hurnedly dressing. More prudent per-on'.
uho couldn’t too quickly forget their decorum, vcrc putting
up sheets to shield themseUcs from the passcrs-b> I uas going
into the St Francis Hotel uhen I heard Wilhc Collier call
to me, ‘Go "West, young man, and bloiv up uith the countn..’
He was wearing bedroom slippers and a floucred drc'^^ing-
gown.

Union Square, into hich so manv oddK dressed persons and
their belongings had been hastih throiim prcicntcd a ctr.-' nge,
uncanny appearance. -A. charmingh unperturbed ladv, lightb
clad, was sittmg on one of her trunks uiih an c.\citable Frcrrh
maid ho\enng about. It uas cold that moniing. between fi.c
and six ‘.Aren’t \ou co’d’’ I a^ked he'. ‘Can’t I get \oa <~rnc-
thing?’ I w alkcd up to the Bohenuan Qub, and proceeded back

Ftfsi pui tshi'd »•» Tki x Z? * ^ l'C5

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to Union Square, carrying a glass of brandy in my hand. I
learned afterwards that the lady was Madame Alda, of the
Metropolitan Opera Co. .

I saw Caruso ^vlth his trunks on a van; and in front of the
Palace Hotel I found Diamond Jim Brady. He was amused to
see me in evening dress, ,and when he went back East he and
many others circulated this story about my dressing for an
earthquake ; in fact, a great deal of my reputation for eccentricity
had, I think, its origin in this incident. It had not occurred to
me that I was oddly dressed for the occasion. I don’t know,
though, what one should wear at an earthquake.

As I was getting sleepy I went back to the St Francis and
went to the desk to get my key. I asked the clerk if it was safe to
go up to my room. ‘Perfectly,’ he said, with the trained assurance
of a Californian. ‘There isn’t the slightest chance in the world
of it happening again.’

Just then the second version, a little before eight o’clock,
shook the whole place angrily. I slept till late afternoon, when
I was awakened by the general excitement in front of the hotel
and the smell of things burning in the distance. My trunks had
been made ready for Australia the day before, and had gone. I
never recovered them.

I walked up to the house of some friends and with them I
drove to Burlingame. Here we stayed for six days. I hoped-that
by that time the company was well on its way to Australia. I
never had any desire to go on that trip, anyway. It occurred to
me that I ought to get word to my family and to the Frohman
office, by whom I was employed. I got a bicycle and started for
San Francisco. I had been quite familiar wth the town, but all
the landmarks were gone, and riding through those streets
which were nothing but rums, it was with the greatest difficulty
that I found the Oakland ferry. A friend had given me his police
badge, with which he assured me I would have no trouble in
getting to Oakland, but some soldiers, seeing the badge, stopped
me and put me to work bossing a gang of men who were piling
up debris I knew so httle about work myself that it was difficult
for me to become a good executive. After about eight hours I
was allowed to proceed to Oakland.

As I got off the boat I met Ashton Stevens, the dramatic
critic. He said, ‘You’re in time to get your boat after all. The

CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTOR

CO7

company is going to sail from Vancouver in three da\-s ’ There
was notWng for it but to go to Austraha.

In Vancouver I found that I had $10 and no clotlics. except
the ones I had on, and these were far from presentable For ?5
I bought a blue-serge suit which did not take kindlv to the damp
air, and when we had been at sea a feu dais it shrunk so tlial I
ivas the butt of the other members of the company whenei er I
appeared.

I wrote a long letter to my sister. I wanted to make it a good
one, worth at least $100, so I desenbed in great detail i\hat I
had seen and what I had been through. 1 confessed to ha\ mg
seen people shot in the street, spiked on bayonets and horrors so
great that the imagination was almost blunt from contemplating
them. I wTote that I had been thrown out of bed b\ the earth-
quake and miraculously escaped injurj' from falling brick* and
plaster, and then, wth much pathos, I described the scene at
the ferry where, iveak from exhaustion and pniation, I Iiad
been cruelly put to work sorting stones by the soldier*

Ethel was reading this letter s>TnpathcticalJy to our uncle,
John Drew, and during one of the best bits he was so strangels
quiet that she stopped and asked* ‘WHiat’s the matter. Uncle
Jack^ Don’t you beheve it^’

T believ’e every word of it,’ he answ'crcd. Tt took a connihion
of Nature to make him get up and the United States Arm> to
make him go to w’ork.’

I w*as broke once in Atlantic City. A certain set of cuffbutlons
which I rather liked had already gone and mi hotel bill was
getting worse and more unpa^-ablc. It was like a situation m
London once, years ago I had a cab, and no monci to pa\ for
it. Everywhere I droic I was turned dowm and. e\cr\ time I
approached a new* prospect I had to ask for more money, as the
cab bill was mounting. When I finally found a complacent
person to lend me some money, the cab bill wns four pound* At
Atlantic City that night I was dining alone when Mon Sinqcr,
the theatrical manager, came up and began talkinq to me He
told me that he was putting on a new piece called A Stull cm
Cinderella ‘AVould you like a part in it’’ he a<rkcd

‘Oh, I don’t know; Fve got something in mind that Fm
considenng,’ I replied. All I was considering at the moment
was who was going to pay for my shnmp bisque.

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‘How would $150 a week do^’ asked Singer.

Up to this time my salary had not been over S50 a week, and
I was so staggered I couldn’t answer. Singer, thinking that I was
hesitating because he had not offered enough, said. ‘Well, make
it S175. If you want some now, here is Si 00.’

By that time I had found my voice, and I accepted the offer.

My first real hit in the theatre was in The Fortune Hunter. One’s
first success' How did it happen^ But while I was pondering
over this brand-new state of things for me - being a hit in a
theatre - there came to me a somewhat saddemng thought.
From now on I had a career, it seemed, which I could ho longer
kick in the pants. It was goodbye to the irresponsibihties of
youth. I had happened to be fairly good at them.

WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS
MURDERER?

Condensed from Plain Talk
JOSEPH BORNSTEIN

Behind the walls of a Mexican penitentiary lives a mysterious
prisoner. The judges who, in 1943, found him guilty of murder
were convinced that everything he said about his identity was
untrue. Newspapers and magazines the world over earned his
picture and reports of his deed, but not a single witness came
forward to testify to having kno^vn him. For nine years he has
hidden his identity - and the instigators of his crime.

The unknown prisoner calls himself Jacques Momard
Vandendreschd, and claims to be a Belgian born in Persia in
1904. He is the murderer of the man whom Joseph Stahn hated
most - Leon Trotsky.

Nothing is known of Vandendreschd before 1938, when Sylvia
Ageloff, a R 7-year-old chmeal psychologist employed by the
New York City Board of Education, left her job and went to
Pans. Shortly after her arrival she met a handsome young man
who called himself Jacques Mornard and said he was studying

First published in ‘The Reader’s Digest" in 19*9

WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS MURDERER? aog

journalism at the Sorbonne. He took her to museums and
theatres, restaurants and mght clubs He had plentj of money,
and told SvKna that he came of a distinguished Belgian famil) .

A )ear before Momard Vandendreschd and S}l\-ia met. one
of her sisters had gone to !Mexico to become a secretaiy* to Leon
Trotsky. S) Ina herself had friends in the Trotskjist group m the
United States. But it net er occurred to her that Momard might
have a hidden reason for cultivating her finendship. He did not
seem mterested in politics and never mentioned Trotsky

One day Momard told Sylviahew anted to help her financially.
He said that the ‘Argus Publishing Company’ had agreed to pay
her 3,000 francs a month to u-rite articles on ps>chologt . S\I\aa
was dehghted and turned over to Momard an article c\cr\'
t\eek. None of the articles, houeter, uas e\er seen m pnnt

In the early days of their fhendship, Momard had disap-
peared for se\eral ueeks. On 26 July 1938 he UTOte S\Ina
from Bmssels tliat his mother had been senously injured m an
automobile accident. His father, he said, was unhurt. Two years
later, ha^■ing apparently forgotten this letter, Momard told the
Mexican pohee that his father had died in 1926, 12 >ears before
the alleged accident.

WTien S)l\'ia made a surpnse \'isit to Bmssels to sec him,
Momard was not at the address he had gi\en her. Shortlv
afterwards he reappeared in Pans and S)hTa accepted without
question his explanation that she had missed him in Bmssels
because he had been suddeni) called to Englamd.

In Febmary 1939, Momard announced that a Belgian news-
paper had appointed him its American correspondent. SyKia
was to return to New' York; he w'ould follow' soon.

In New York, S) Iwa w aited m vain. Cables informed her that
Momard was ha\mg trouble getting his American \Tsa. She there-
upon w'ent to work for the Department of ^Velfare in Brooklm.

Momard finally arri\ ed in New' York m September. He noi\
called himself ‘Frank Jacson’, explained that as a Belgian
citizen he was subject to militaiy seivicc and could not get
permission to come to America. He had therefore paid S3.500
for a false Canadian passport. Furthermore, he had changed his
profession* he was to be assistant to a European broker of raw
matenals in Mexico S) Ma was disappointed, but not suspicious
of her friend’s stoiy*.

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reader’s digest omnibus

In October ‘Frank Jacson’ went to Mexico City. Soon he
wrote that he was lonely. He urged Sylvia to come to Mexico.

At that time Leon Trotsky, who lived in Coypacan, near
Mexico City, was frequently in the news. Communist leaders
were demanding his expulsion from Mexico, calling him ‘an
ally of American imperialism’ and ‘a criminal conspirator agamst
the workers of Russia and Mexico.’

Defeated by Stalin in the fight to become successor to Lemn,
Trotsky had been driven successively from Russia, Turkey,
France and Norway. From Mexico, Trotsky continued "to
denounce Stalin and his policies.

In January 1940, Sylvia took a three months’ leave of absence
and flew to Mexico. Her sister, secretary to Trotsky, and various
persons whom Sylvia had known in New York were there also. '
Sylvia introduced Frank Jacson to many of these people.

In March, Sylvia had to return to her job in Brooklyn. Jacson
remained on close terms with his new acquaintances, particu-
larly with the Rosmers, a French couple who were guests of the
Trotskys. When Jacson learned that the Rosmers were to sail
from Vera Cruz to France at the end of May, and that Mrs
Trotsky wanted to see them off, Jacson ofiered to drive them all
to Vera Cruz. They accepted.

The trip was scheduled foi 28 May. Between three and four
o’clock on the morning of the 24th, some 30 men in Mexican
police uniforms, led by a man dressed as a Mexican army colonel,
disarmed and tied up the police guards around Trotsky’s house.
Robert Sheldon Harte, one of Trotsky’s private bodyguards,
was forced mto one of the invaders’ cars.

Posting a machine gun in the courtyard, the invaders sprayed
the doors and windows of the building with a steady stream of
bullets. The Trotskys rolled out of bed and lay flat on the floor.
They heard someone enter the darkened bedroom, fire a few
shots and leave, apparently convinced that there was no survivor.
Then cars were heard driving quickly away.

The mystery of the attack was never solved. Trotsky and his
Avife had miraculously escaped mjury. A few weeks afterwards,
the body of Robert Sheldon Harte, covered with hme, was
found m a pit.

Four days after the assault, Jacson drove up to Trotsky’s
house to pick up the Rosmere and Mrs Trotsky for the trip

WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS MURDERER? 211

to Vera Cruz. They were still at breakfast, and Jacson was
inwted to have a cup of coffee. For the first tunc Frank Jacson
stood face to face wth Leon Trotsky.

From this day on, Jacson was always \velcome at Trotsky’s
home.

Trotsky’s house was now transformed into a fortress. Double
steel doors, electncaily controlled, replaced the wood entrance
Massive steel shutters were installed at the doors and uondows
of Trotsk/s hwng quarters. Bombproof ceilmgs and floors were >.
built, barbed-wre entanglements were set up: observation
towers dominated the surrounding neighbourhood.

But Jacson was free to come and go as he chose. To the guards
and secretaries he was someone ‘the old man’ knew and
trusted.

l\Tien Sylvia amved m Mexico for her summer vacation in
August she found Jacson looking like a sick man, and obwously
under a psychological strain. On lo August they were imnted
for tea at the Trotskys At this tea Jacson for the first time took
part m a pohtical dispute -an argument concernmg ivhat
propaganda pohcy Trotsky should pursue. He agreed fully ivith
Trotsky’s point of view and volunteered to wnte an article
defending it. Sylvia, however, sided against Jacson and
Trotsky.

A week later Jacson brought Trotsky an outline of the
article - ‘a few phrases, muddled stuff,’ Trotsky afterwards told
his ivife. But he promised to read the fimshed manuscript on the
following Thursday.

That day, 20 August, at 5 30 p m , three of Trotsky’s friends -
Joseph Hansen, Charles Cornell and Melquiades Bemtez - were
at work on the roof of Trotsky’s house, connecting a siren ivith
the alarm system to be used in case of a new attack, when
Jacson was admitted. The guard on duty, Harold Robins, took
him to Trotsky, who was feeding the chickens and rabbits in
the backyard Jacson told Trotsky that Sylvia ivas coming any
minute to say goodbye; the two of them ^\cre leaving for New
York the next day Then, seeing Mrs Trotsky on the balcony of
the house, he said, ‘I am frightfully thirsty May I ha\e a glass
of water?’ Mrs. Trotsky noticed the grey-green colour of his face
and his nervousness, and that, contrar}’- to his habit, he wore a
hat and carried a ramcoat over his left arm.

212 reader’s digest OMNIBUS

WTien Jacson, followed by Mrs Trotsky, returned to the
rabbit cages, Trotsky said, ‘Well, shall we go over your article'"
He led Jacson into the study and closed the door

Three or four minutes later Mrs Trotsky, who was in the
kitchen, and Robins and the three men working on the roof
heard ‘a terrible, soul-shaking cry - prolonged and agonised,
half scream, half sob’. Before any of them could reach the study,
Leon Trotsky, his face covered with blood, stumbled through
the door to the dining room and slumped to the floor.

Inside the study Jacson stood gasping, a revolver in his hand
Robms sprang at him and knocked him to the floor. Seemingly
half conscious, Jacson whined: ‘They made me do it. They
made me do it They have imprisoned my mother.’ A few
seconds later he came to himself and struggled to escape. Hansen
helped Robins overcome the murderer. Jacson regained his self-
control and refused to talk. He said only: ‘Sylvia had nothing
to do with it. No, it was not the GPU. I have nothing to do with
the GPU.’

Detectives who amved a few imnutes later found the room
spattered "with blood; chairs and desks were overturned, books
and papers scattered over the floor. Near the desk was the
murder instrument: a heavy wooden handle wth a sharp steel
pick at one end.

Jacson told the detectives that Trotsky had seated himself at
his desk, with Jacson standing at his left just behind,the chair.
^\Tien Trotsky began readmg, Jacson took the weapon from
under his raincoat. ‘I raised it up high,’ he told the police. ‘I
shut my eyes and struck ivith all my strength.’ Trotsky, uttermg
a terrible cry, got up and struggled wdth his attacker, showing
remarkable strength for a man of 62. But the pick had pene-
trated almost three inches into his brain. Twenty-six hours later
Trotsky was dead.

The murderer had been well prepared, besides the pick and
a revolver, a nine-inch dagger was found sewn into a pocket of
Jacson’s suit. There were no identifying papers; Jacson declared
that he had burned his Canadian passport. His wallet contained
$890 in American money. The detectives also found a type-
written letter in French. The signature ‘Jac’ and the date
20 August 1940, the day of the murder, had been added in
pencil. In this letter the killer — or someone behind him - gave

WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS MURDERER? 213

an explanation for his ‘act of justice’ and asked its pubhcation
‘in case anything unfortunate happens to me.’

Beginnmg ivith the statement ‘I am of an old Belgian family’,
the writer introduces himself as a journalist u ho had joined the
Trotskyist organisation in Paris. One day an unnamed member
of the Bureau of Trotsky’s ‘Fourth Intemational’ suggested that
he go to Mexico and meet Trotskj', and supplied money and
false identification papers After he arrived m Mexico, a disillu-
sionment occurred: he found the great Trotsky actually a
contemptible character, a man who, as the Stalinists smd, ‘had
no other object than to utihse his followers to satisfy his personal
ends’. ‘Jac’ was completely cured of his illusions when - the
letter said - Trotsky proposed that he go to Russia to organise
attempts against the hves of several persons, beginnmg i\-ith
Stahn

*Jac’ added that he ivas engaged ‘to a certam young girl
whom I love with all my soul’, but that Trotsky demanded that
he break oflT wth this girl because she sided inth the minonty
m his group The letter ended. ‘It is probable that after my act
she may not tvish to know me any more; nevertheless, it was
also for her sake that I decided to sacrifice m>-self ’

On one pomt the ^vriter of his confession was nght: Syhia
Ageloff ^vished she had never knomi the man who killed Leon
Trotsky. IMien confironted irith Jacson immediately after tlie
murder she shouted: ‘You dirt)' murderer' You dirty GPU
agent! I hope I never see you agam'’ ^Vith tears runmng dow'n
her face, she accused* him of having cultivated her m order to
murder Leon Trotsky.

The organisers of Trotsk)'’s assassination apparently expected
that the murderer would either escape or be lulled. They i\erc
not prepared for a third possibihty, brought about by Trotsky
himself. Although close to losing consciousness, Trotsky had
pointed towards the adjoining room where his guards iiere
beating the murderer and said, ‘Don’t let him be killed - he
must be forced to talk ’

In his first oral confession, Jacson gave a version different in
many important details from the written one. Nor could he
explam the contradictions, and the investigators realised that
probably he had not e\'en been the author of the first confession
Cross-examined concerning his identity, the murderer repeated

H

reader’s digest omnibus

214

what he had told Sylvia. But an official of the Belgian legation
in Mexico, after a long conversation wth Jacson, declared that
he did not beheve he was a Belgian. Most of Jacson’s statements
pertaining to his life in Belgium were incorrect, the official said,
and his French accent was that of a man who had learned the
language in S\vitzerland.

Almost every step in the investigation added to the evidence
that not only was Jacson (or Momard or Vandendreschd)
lying about his identity, but that the entire confession was
contrived.

Questioned about the Canadian passport, Momard could
not remember any detail except the name ‘Frank Jacson’. He
pretended he had never examined the document closely and did
not know when and where ‘Frank Jacson’ was supposed to have
been bom.

But in the files of the American consulate in Mexico City was
the application of a Frank Jacson for a transit visa to Montreal,
giving his passport number, its date of issuance and the place
and date of birth: Lovmac, Yugoslavia, on 13 June 1905.
Canadian authorities found that under the number shown on
Jacson’s visa application an authentic Canadian passport had
been issued to Tony Babich, a Bntish subject naturalised in
Canada, bom in Lovmac, Yugoslavia, on 13 June 1905. Further
investigation revealed that Babich had gone to Spain, volun-
teered in the Loyalist army then fighting the ci\ffi war, and
had died as a member of the International Brigade. Spanish
authorities had certified his death.

What probably happened then can be guessed from informa-
tion revealed by General Walter Krivitsky, former chief of the
Soviet military mtelhgence in Western Europe, who turned
away from Stalin and escaped to the United States (and who
later was foimd in a Washington hotel room, killed by revolver
bullets). In his book. In Stalinas Secret Service, Krivitsky reported
that during the Spanish Civil War all members of the Inter-
national Brigade were ordered to turn over their passports to
their superiors. The passports of those who died were sent to
Moscow, where skilled techmcians made them over for the use
of secret agents to be sent abroad.

During his trial Momard’s prison cell was equipped with a
gramophone and records and books; his meals came from an

‘the light ih the %S'IN*DOw’ 215

expensive restaurant. These things iiere paid for through his
laiiyers firom funds whose source remained their professional
secret.

The trial dragged on for months, and was still going on uhcn
Ehtler invaded Russia, thus maMng Stahn for some years the
ally of the democracies. Finally, on 16 April 1943, the Mexican
Sixth Penal Court sentenced Jacques Momard to 20 years’
imprisonment for premeditated murder. In their Nmtten deci-
sion the judges dedared: ‘Momard’s attitude, from the time he
undertook Ids trip to Mexico until he succeeded in estabhshing
contact wth Trotsky and afterwards, is one of falseness and
artifice. The Court must dedare that the trip of Frank Jacson
or Jacques Momard to klexico was undert^en with the sole
object of killing Trotsky.’

How'ever, those who had sent him on his mission to Mexico
have never to this day been betrayed by the man who now calls
himself Jacques Momard Vandendreschd.

‘THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW’

LOIS MATTOX MILLER.

I MET him first on a summer day in 1936 . 1 had rushed into his
dingy htde shop to have my slippers re-heeled. He greeted me
cheerily. *You’re new in this neighbourhood, aren’t you^’

Yes, I admitted, I had moved into the apartment house at
the end of the block only a w’eek before
‘This is a fine neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘You’ll be happy here. ’
I sat there in my stocking feet, w’atching as he removed the
old leather and, ivith a sad tut-tut, exammed the leather cover-
mg the heel -now’ worn through by a too long delay of this
rep^ job I grew' a little impatient, for I w’as mshmg to an
appointment. ‘Please huny',’ I begged.

Helooked at me reproachfully o\ er his stcel-nmmcd spectacles.
‘Now’, lady, w'e w’on’t be long. I w’ant to do a good job ’ He
paused. ‘You see, I have a tradition to uphold.’

A tradition? In this drab httle shop without a thing to

Tmt in ’TV Rodent in ISIS

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distinguish it from so many other cobbler’s shops on the side
streets of New York?

He must have sensed my surprise, for he smiled as he went
on. ‘Yes, lady, I inherited a tradition. My father and my grand-
father were cobblers in Italy, and they were the best. My father
always told me, “Son, do the best ]oh on every shoe that comes
into the shop, and be proud of your fine work. Do that always,
and you’ll be doubly blessed - both happy and prosperous ” ’

As he handed me the finished shoes, he said: ‘These iviU last
a longer time. These are good leather.’

I left in a hurry, late for my appointment yet with a warm and
grateful feeling. On my way home I passed the httle shop again.
There he was, bending over his last. To my surprise he waved
cheerily. Thus began a rewarding friendship.

Those were disturbing years of depression and war. Daily as I
passed his shop we exchanged a fidendly hand wave. At first
I went in only when I had repair work to be done, then I found
myself dropping in occasionally just for a chat.

He was surpnsingly tall for an Italian, yet quite stooped from
long years of toil. His hair was thin and grey, his face deeply
lined. But I remember best his fine brown eyes, alive %vith
kindness and humour. I remember how they flashed one day at
the mention of Mussolmi. ‘The dog!’ he said. It was thestrongest
word I ever heard him use.

He was the happiest man I’ve ever known. Often, as he stood
in his shop wndow, hammering away at his last, he sang
lustily. The Itahans in our neighbourhood called him la luce alia
Jinestra - the light in the window.

Once, as we talked, he turned to wave cordially to a passer-by,
then said to me: ‘There’s a man I’d hke to know. He’s been
passing here for years. I \vish he’d stop in sometimes, for he has
a fine, honest face.’

I did not tell him that I knew the man. But a week later he
told me ‘I was right about that man. He stopped m yesterday
and we had a fine talk. There’s a good man, if I ever saw one.’

I knew then that the honesty and goodness of this gentle
cobbler had warmed another heart as it had mine - thawing a
natural reserve to let kindness shme through.

One day I came away from my apartment angry and dis-
gusted because of a sloppy job the painters had done. My friend

‘the light IX THE WIXDO^\ ’ 21 7

waved to me as I m ent by, so I turned into lus shop for solace.
He let me rant about the incompetence and inefficiency of
present-day workmen. They had no pride in their ^\ork, I
argued, they didn’t e^en A\ant to uork-just wshed to collect
their high \\ ages and loaf.

He agreed ‘There’s a lot of that land around, sure But
maybe ffiey’re not entirely to blame Maybe their fathers had
no pnde in their work. That’s tough on a kid. It depmes him
of something important.’

‘IVhat can be done about it?’ I asked.

He waited a minute before ans%%enng, then looked at me
squarely. ‘There is only one \vay. Every man or uoman who
hasn’t inhented a pndeful tradition must start building one
No matter what sort of work a man docs, if he gives it his best
each day. he’s starting a tradition for his children to live up to
And he’s makmg lots of happiness for himself.’

I w'ent abroad for a few months Shortly after my return I
Avalked down the street, looking forward eagerly to his surprise
w'hen he saw' me

There w'as no ‘hght in the w'indow'’. The door was closed.
There was a little card ‘Call for shoes at laundiy' next door.’

I went into the laundiy', full of apprehension. Yes, the old
man had suffered a stroke ti\o weeks ago. nght there in his
window' He had died a few' days later

‘\Ve sure miss him around here,’ the laundiyman said ‘He
W'as so happy all the time ’

I went away with a heav)* heart I would miss him, too. But
he had left me something - a rare bit of wisdom I shall always
remember. ‘If you have inhented a prideful tradition, you must
carr)' it on; if \ou ha^en’t, then start bmlding one now.’

W

SCOTCH AND WRY

A tra\ elling salesman, held up in the Orkney Islands by a
bad storm, telegraphed to his firm in Aberdeen : ‘Marooned
by storm. Wire instructions.’

The reply came: ‘Start summer holiday as from
yesterday.’

THE ENEMY’S MASTERPIECE OF

ESPIONAGE

/

J. EDGAR HOOVER
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation

One morning early in January, 1940, a traveller stood at the
rail of a ship as it entered New York Harbour. The pilot had
just come aboard with the usual officials. No one else was near
as one of the boarding party whispered to the man at the
rail:

‘You are to be S. T. Jenkins. As soon as we land, go to the
Belvoir Hotel. Wait in your room!’

That evening after hours of waiting, Jenkins heard a key turn
in a lock; the door to the next suite quietly opened and two
special agents of the Federal Bmreau of Investigation marched
in. Jenkins, who was on the FBI pay-roll, shook hands with the
agents and plunged into a disturbing report:

‘I have been a student at the Nazi Espionage School, Klop-
stock Pension, Hamburg. My class was graduated two weeks
ago. In a farewell speech, the principal. Dr Hugo Sebold, said:

‘ “The greatest problem of dtr Fuhrefs agents in North and
South America is keeping in touch with us. The Americans have
given us a great deal of trouble. But before long we shall be
commumcating back and forth throughout the world with
impunity. I cannot explain the method now but watch out for
the dots — lots and lots of litUe dots!”

Fmt pubtUked tn ‘The Beader’s Digesf in 1946

2X8

THE enemy’s masterpiece OF ESPIONAGE 210

‘I have been sent to America with my orders - and ^vas told
nothing more,’ our secret agent said.

Until this time, the FBI had kept German and Japanese
espionage m the United States backed into a comer by con-
stantly uncovering every new enemy communication technique.
■\Vehad identified their couriers, traced their mail drops, broken

their codes and solved their secret inks; we had tracked down
their hidden radio transmitters, sometimes operating them for
the enemy.

Once we took from a spy’s pocket a box of safety matches.
Four of them, looking just like the others, -were actually little
pencils that wTote invisibly, the writing later to be developed by
a solution made from a rare drug. This stoiy^-book contraption
we exposed, along wth micro-film letters rolled around a spool
and covered wnth silk thread, stitched into the backbones of
magazines; one film was tucked inside the barrel of a fountain
pen that had to be broken to extract the note.

■\\Tien eight saboteurs landed on the Atlantic Coast, they
carried handkerchiefs on ivhich the high command had written
in ghost ink the names of Nazi s^mipathisers in the United
States. From the rubber heel of one agent w'C remo\ed a photo-
graphic image of a U.S. Navy bluepnnt for a submanne escape
dence.

All these derices, and more, we had detected - but w'hat was
this matter of the ‘dots, dots, dots’?

220

reader’s digest omnibus

Our first move was to call in from our laboratories a young
physicist who had done extraordinary work in colour micro-
photography. He was assigned to certain experiments, based on
guesses m our office about the mearung of Sebold’s boast.
Meamvhile, every agent was looking feverishly for some telltale
evidence of the as yet undetected dots.

One day in August, 1941, we met a youngish traveller from
the Balkans on his arrival in the United States. "We knew he
was the playboy son of a millionaire. There was reason to believe
he was a German agent. "With meticulous care, we examined
his possessions - fi-om toothbrush to shoes ; his clothes, his papers
Wlule a laboratory agent was holding an envelope so that the
light slanted obliquely across its surface, he saw a sudden tiny
gleam. A dot had reflected the light. A dot - a punctuation
period on the front of the envelope; a black particle no bigger
than a fly speck.

With infinite care, the agent touched the point of a needle
under the rim of the black circle and pried the thing loose. It
was a bit of alien matter that had been driven into the fibre of
the paper, where it looked like a typewritten period. Under the
microscope it was magnified 200 times. And then we could see
that It was an image on a film of a full-sized typewritten letter;
a spy letter ivith blood-chillmg text:

There is reason to believe that the scientific -works for the
utilisation of atomic-kernel energy are being driven for-
ward into a certain direction in the United States partly by
use of helium. Continuous information about the tests made
on this subject are required and particularly:

1. "WTiat process is practised in the United States for
transportmg heavy uranium?

2. ■\\Taere are being made tests %vith uranium? (Uni-
versities, industrial laboratories, etc.)

3. "WTiich other raw materials are being used in these
tests? Entrust only,best experts -with this.

Now we had it! The German espionage service had found a
way to photograph a full-sized letter do^vn to the size of a
midge. Actually, that was what we had suspected. Our scientists
bad succeeded in making some very small images of our o^vn;

THE EXEMY’s masterpiece OF ESPIOXAGE 221

their handicap lay not m the theory- but in lacking the emulsion
the Germans had perfected.

It -was incredibly ingenious and cffecti\e, this micro-dot
gadget. It perfectly counterfeited a tjpewTitten or printed dot.
The young Balkan agent, for example, had four telegraph blanks
in his pocket, carrying Lilliputian spy orders that looked like
periods; ii micro-dots on the four papers. AVc found one tiny
strip of the film pasted under a postage stamp that carried the
images of 25 fuU-sized tj-pewntten sheets!

"NVe now knew that the Balkan playboy had orders to investi-
gate not only our atomic energy project but also to report on
monthly production of planes, how manj were dch\crcd to
Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and how many .\merican
pilots w’ere being trained. Under questiomng, he was bland,
affable, and, seeing that we knew about the dots, he began to
gush information.

He had studied under the famous Professor Zapp, im entor of
the imero-dot process, at the Techmeal High School in Dresden.
Espionage messages were first tj'ped on square sheets of paper
and then photographed with a high-precision miniature camera.
This first reduction w as to about the size of a postage stamp. Again
It w'as photographed, this time through a reversed microscope,
the infimtesimally small image being retained and developed
on a glass slab heavily coated with the secret emulsion. The
developed negative was then painted over with collodion, so
the emulsion could be shpped bodily off the glass. The technician
then used a curious adaptation of the h)-podermic needle, the
pomt of which was clipped oflT and the round edge sharpened.
This was placed over Uie micro-dot as a baker’s cutting cup
pmches out a piece of dough - and the micro-dot lifted out.

Next, at a pomt on the letter where the dot was to be placed
the paper was scratched ever so shghtly with a needle. Tlie
s)Tinge plunger pressed the dot into the texture Another v erv*
small needle scratched the fibre back over the dot and finallv it
received a dab of collodion to tie down the fibres of the paper.

Later, Zapp immensely simplified his process. In a cabinet
the size of a dispatch case, most of these operations were per-
formed mechanically. Eventually the machines were turned out
in quantity and shipped to agents m South America. Periodic
consignments of the emulsion were also dispatched at intervals.

222

reader’s digest omnibus

To read the missives, Nazi agents in South America carried an
ingenious collapsible microscope.

I doubt if we can ever disclose the method by which we
were able to spot and intercept hundreds of micro>dot messages
written in South America. Through the constant scrutiny of
micro-dots we got a daily insight into the doings of various
gangs. They were viciously active, acquiring information on
ship movements through the Panama Canal, the deficient con-
dition of one of the locks, the extent of destruction of U.S. oil
stores in the attack on Pearl Harbour. Urgent demands came
from Berlin for more and more. On one spy we found what
seemed an innocent telephone message on a crumpled memo
form from a hotel switchboard. But the printing of that blank
contained two periods which when enlarged contained several
messages, including the following:

Here are special orders.

It is reported that a cartridge powder is being manu-
factured in the U.S. A. which is practically smokeless and
has a weak muzzle fire. More details desired: Colour of
the muzzle fire, colour of the smoke. If possible, the
composition of the powder.^

The Japanese, too, were playing the dot game. On 1 2 February
1942 micro-dot message number 90 of a series being watched,
embedded in the envelope of a letter mailed to an address in
Brazil, relayed a message from Tokyo to a Japanese naval
attache in South America as follows:

If communication -with Q,. is impossible send I. or repre-
sentative to Argentina to establish communications with
the naval attache there.

Q,. was a notorious Japanese naval spy.

Often messages were trumped up by the agents to fool their
superiors into thinking they had extraordinary inside sources of
information. Spies constantly lifted items from news magazines.
Between 20 January 1942 and 5 February 1943, they sent 16
messages lifted from Tim and 72 from Newsweek. But Germans
in Portugal also paid neutral sailors for copies of American

* This is part of the message reproduced on page 218 from FBI files

THE enemy’s masterpiece OF ESPIONAGE 223

magazines - 300 escudos, then about $2 1 , for a single magazine
containing mihtar)’ mformation. So the cat i\as soon out of the
bag and a plaintive message came through to all German agents:

‘We want what is not printed in the news ’

Many spies were arrested, many gang nests cleaned out,
because we had the secret of the micro-dot. One day a message
mentioned casually the name of a woman resident of Madnd.
A search of our voluminous cross-file re\ealcd that some >ears
before she had cabled money to a man in America. Wc found
that this young man was idhng m Washington, and tliat he had
oncebeenvery attentive to an Amencan girl. Later she had joined
the ^Vacs and was now on the Pacific Coast As always, the
Army co-operated; the young 'Wac was ordered to 'Washington
and 15 minutes after her arrival she was in the FBI office.

How w'ell did she know this man'^* Once he had been \cry
attentive to her but his broodmg and secretive manner had
repelled her; finally she dropped all correspondence with him.
"VVe put the problem to her frankly : w hat w e needed w as a pipc-
hne into his innermost thoughts. As a soldier in the Army of the
Umted States would she be wilhng to try to discover if he were
an enemy?

It w'as contrived that she ivould run into her admirer acci-
dentally on the street. Taken in by the ruse, he was delighted to
see her again and for the next month the \Vac pla> cd Delilah
magnificently. Today the spy is behind bars because he blabbed
to her of his espionage work, beIic\Tng in his vanit>' tliat she
loved him enough to be his accomphee.

That is the ivay thmgs go* you wait for the breaks; the enemy
will eventually make a imstake. In this case, he should never
have mentioned that w’oman in Madrid in his secretly concealed
letter.

The most important case broken through the micro-dot was
in a South Amencan country, where we were finding letters
wntten b) all sorts of people - ever>* one loaded irith micro-dots
for Berlin. Love letters, family missucs, business communica-
tions, all seemed harmless, but their embedded micro-dot
messages had to do with the blowing up of seized Axis ships
m southern harbours and details of war production. The letters
w ere in different handwiitings, or t^.’ped on Mirious n’pewnters,
but the micro-dots they secretly earned were all produced b\

224 reader’s digest omnibus

the same machines, the signatures in the same handwriting.
Hence all were prepared by a single organisation. The day
came when in one city after another in South America, from
shop and office and home. South Amencan authonties aided by
our agents were able to seize a great interlocking ring of Nazi
agents - all enemies of the Umted States.

These are but samples of the plans we blocked because we
got that tip-off on the micro-dot from an agent planted right
under Dr Sebold’s enormous nose.

Was this so-called German masterpiece the last word in secret
communications^ By no means. Today the U.S. Government
has a process infinitely superior. Nothing like it has ever been
used before. But we are not boasting about it. Espionage being
the merciless struggle that it is, the day may come when we
shall have to devise something better.

MAMMA AND HER BANK ACCOUNT

Condensed from The Toronto Star Weekly

A SHORT STORY BY KATHRYN FORBES

Every Saturday night Mamma would sit down by the scrubbed
kitchen table and with much ^vrinkhng of usually placid brows
count out the money Papa had brought home in the httle
envelope.

There would be various stacks. ‘For the landlord,’ Mamma
would say, pihng up the big silver pieces.

‘For the grocer.’ Another group of coins.

‘For Karen’s shoes to be half-soled,’ and Mamma would
count out the httle silver.

‘Teacher says this week I’ll need a notebook.’ That would be
Dagmar or Knstin or Nels or I.

Mamma would solemnly detach a nickel or a dime and set
it aside.

We would watch the diminishing pile with breathless interest.
At last. Papa would ask, ‘Is all?’ and when Mamma nodded, we

Ftnl puiluhed in ‘The Reader's DigesF in 1941

MAMMA AND HER BANK ACCOUNT

could relax a little and reach for school books and homc\\ork.
For Mamma would look up then and smile ‘Is good ’ she'd
murmur. ‘^Ve do not have to go to The Bank.’

It was a wonderful thing, tliat Bank Account of Mamma's.
We were all so proud of it. It ga\c us such a warm, secure
feeling. No one else we knew* had money in a bjg bank down town.

I remember when tlie Jensens down the street were put out
because they couldn’t pay their rent. We children w*atched the
big strange men carry out the furniture, took furti\ e notice of
poor Mrs Jensen’s shamed tears and I was choked with sudden
fear. This, then, happened to people who didn't ha\e the stack
of coins marked Landlord Alight this - could tins \iolcncc
happen to us^

Then Dagmar’s hot httle hand clutched mine ‘IFf have a
Bank Account,’ she reassured me softly and suddenly I could
breathe again.

^^^len Nels graduated from high school he w’anted to go on to
busmess college. ‘Is good,’ Mamma said, and Papa nodded
approvingly.

Eagerly we brought up chairs and gathered around the table.
I took down the gaily painted box that .Aunt Signd had sent us
from Norway one Christmas and laid it carcfull) in front of
Mamma.

This w'as the ‘Little Bank’. Not to be confused, \ou under-
stand, with the Big Bank down town. The Little Bank was used
for sudden emergencies, such as the time Kristin broke her arm

226

reader’s digest omnibus

and had to be taken to a doctor, or when Dagmar got croufi
and Papa had to go to the drugstore for medicme to put into
the steam kettle.

Nels had it all written out neatly. So much for tuition, so
much for books. Mamma looked at the neat figures for a long
time. Then she counted out the money in the Little Bank.
There was not enough.

She pursed her bps.- ‘We do not,’ she reminded us gently,
‘want to have to go to The Bank.’

We all shook our heads.

‘I will work in Dillon’s grocery during vacation,’ Nels
volunteered.

Mamma gave him a bright snule and laboriously ivrote down
a sum and added and subtracted. Papa did it in his head. He
was very quick on arithmetic. ‘Is not enough,’ he said. Then
he took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it for a long
time. ‘I give up tobacco,’ he said suddenly.

Mamma reached across the table and touched Papa’s sleeve,
but she didn’t say anything. Just wrote down another figure.

‘I will mind the Sonderman children every Friday night,’ I
said. ^Vhen I saw the eyes of the little ones I added, ‘Kristin,
Dagmar and Karen will help me.’

‘Is good,’ Mamma said.

We all felt very good. We had passed another milestone
•without havmg to go do'wn town and draw money out of
Mamma’s Bank Account. The Little Bank was sufficient for the
present.

So many things, I remember, came out of it that year.
Karen’s costume for the school play, Dagmar’s tonsil operation,
my Girl Scout umform. And always, m the background, was
the comfortmg knowledge that should our efforts fail, we still
had The Bank to depend upon.

Even when the stnke came. Mamma would not let us worry
unduly. We all worked together so that the momentous trip
doivn toivn could be postponed. It was almost like a game.

"We didn’t even mind ha'vmg to move the sideboard into the
kitchen so that we could let the front room to two boarders.

During that time Mamma ‘helped out’ at Kruper’s bakery
for a big sack of only slightly stale bread and coffee cake. And
as Mamma said, fresh bread was not too good for a person and

MAMMA AND HER BANK ACCOUNT 227

if you put coffee cake into the hot oven it was nearly as nice as
when first baked

Papa washed bottles at the creamery every' night and they
gave him three quarts of fresh milk and all the sour milk he
could carry away. Alamma made fine cheese.

The day the strike was over and Papa went back to work, I
saw Mamma stand a httle straighter, as if to get a kink out of
her back.

She looked around at us proudly. ‘Is good,’ she smiled ‘Sec?
We did not have to go doivn to The Bai^ *

* * *

Then suddenly, it seemed, all the children were grown up and
working. One by one w’e married and went away. Papa seemed
shorter now, and Mamma’s wheaten braids were sheened with
silver.

The little house w’as ‘clear’, and Papa’s pension started.

Last y'ear I sold my first story.

"When the cheque came I burned over to Mamma’s and pul
the long green slip of paper m her lap. ‘For >ou,’ I said, ‘to put
in your Bmik Account.’

She fingered it for a moment. ‘Is good,’ she said.

‘Tomorrow,’ I told her, ‘you must take it down to The Bank.’
‘You 'Will go with me, Kathiy'n?’

‘That won’t be necessary, Mamma. See? I’xe endorsed it to
you. Just hand it to the teller, he’ll deposit it to \our account ’
A httle smile touched her bps as she looked up at me.

‘Is no account,’ Mamma said. ‘In all my life I never been
inside a Bank.’

CONCERT PITCH

The late 'Snadiimr de Pachmann, most capnaous of pianists,
always fussed over his piano stool in full \'ievN of the
audience. On one occasion, he fiddled and fumed and called
for something to sit on. ^Vhcn a tluck book w as handed him,
he tried it, shook his head. Then he carcfullj tore off a
Mngle page, tried it again, and smiled happily as he began
his first number.

MOTHER’S BILLS

Condensed from ‘Life with Father^

»

CLARENCE DAY

Father was always trying to make Mother keep track of the
household expenses. He had a full set of account books at home
m addition to those in his office, and his ledger showed at a
glance exactly how much a month or a year his clothes or his
club or his cigar bills amounted to. Before he got mamed, these
books had apparently given him great satisfaction, but he said
they were never the same after that. He still knew what his
personal expenses were, but they were microscopic compared
to his household expenses, and of these he knew no details, only
the hombl'e total.

Every once in so often he tried to explain his system to
Mother. But Mother didn’t feel that women should have any-
thing to do with accounts, any more than men should have to
see that the parlour was dusted. Every time Father showed her
his ledger, she was unsympathetic. She had to do the mending
and marketing and take care of the children, and she told Father
she had no time to leam to be a book-keeper too.

Father knew where some of the money went, for part of the
expenses were charged. But, looking at the bills, he said that
many of the details were not clear to him, and most of the rest
were incredible. He tned to go over the bills regularly with
Mother, demanding information about items he did not under-
stand. But every now and then there were items she didn’t
understand, either. She behaved as though the bill were a total
stranger to her. This was one of the features that enraged Father
most.

Mother was one of those persons for whom charge accounts
were invented. When she bought something and charged it, the
first of the next month seemed far away, and she hoped that
Father might be mce about it for once. She was a different
woman entirely when she had to pay cash. It was hard to get

Ftrst pubUsiei tn ‘The Readers DigesT tn 1935

228

mother’s bills

229

cash out of Father, and she thought Uvice before she could bear
to part with, the money. But shopping on a charge account %\as
fun.

Father did his level best to take tlic fun out of it. Once c\ cn
month he held court and sat as judge, and required her to
explain her crimes and misdemeanours 'When she cried he said
at the top of his voice that he wished to be reasonable but that
he couldn’t afford to spend mone)' that way, and the) would
have to do better. What made household expenses jump up and
dowTi so^ ‘Anyone would suppose that there would be some
regularity after a while which would let a man trs to make
plans, but I never know from one month to the next what to
expect.’

Mother said she didn’t, cither. All she knew was that when
the bills mounted up, it didn’t mean that she had been
extravagant. \

‘^Vell, It certainly means that you’ve spent a dc\il of a lot of
money,’ said Father

There were times when etcry month the totals ivcnt up and
up; and then, just as Father had resigned himself to this awful
outgo, the expenses, to his utter amazement, would take a sharp
drop

Mother didn’t keep track of these totals, she was too bus)
w'atching small details, and Father nc\cr knew whether to tell
her the good news or not. He alwa)s did tell her, because he
couldn’t keep things to himself But he alwa)s had cau^c to
regret it. He told her in as disciplmar) a manner as possible
He appeared at her door, w a\ang the bills at her w ith a ilircatcn-
mg scowl, and said, ‘r\c told )Ou again and again that \ou
could keep expenses down if )ou tned, and this shows I was
right.’

Motlier w'as alwa)'s startled at these attacks, but she didn’t
lose her presence of mind She asked how much the amount w as
and said it was all due to her good management, of course, and
Father ought to gi\ e her the diflcrcnce

At this point Father suddenK found himself on the dcfcn'ii c
and the entire moral lecture he had intended to dclncr w.is
wrecked. The more thes talked, the clearer it seemed to Mother
that he owed her that monev Onl\ when he i%as lucks could he
get out of her room wathout pa)ing it.

reader’s digest omnibus

230

He said this was one of the things about her that was enough
to drive a man mad.

The other thing was her lack of system, which was always
cropping up in new ways. Father at last invented what seemed
a perfect method of recording expenses. Whenever he gave any
money to Mother, he asked her what it was for and made a note
of it. These items, added to those in the bills, would show him
exactly where every dollar had gone.

But they didn’t.

He consulted his notebook. T gave you six dollars on the
25th of last month,’ he said, ‘to buy a new coffee-pot.’

‘Yes,’ Mother said, ‘because you broke your old one. You
threw it right on the floor.’

Father frowned. ‘I’m not talking about that,’ he answered. ‘I
am simply endeavouring to find out from you, if I can — ^

‘But it’s so silly to break a nice cofiee-pot, Clare, and there
was nothing the matter with the coffee that mormng; it was
made just the same as it always is.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Father. ‘It was made in a damned barbaric
manner.’

‘And I couldn’t get another French one,’ Mother continued,
‘because that httle shop had stopped selling them.’

‘But I gave you six dollars to buy a new pot,’ Father firmly
repeated, ‘and now I find that you apparently got one at Lewis
& Conger’s and charged it. Here’s their bill: “one brown
earthenware drip coffee-pot, $5.” ’

‘So I saved you a dollar,’ Mother said triumphantly, ‘and
you can hand it nght over to me.’

‘Bah! What nonsense you talk!’ Father cried. ‘Is there no way
to get this thing straightened out^ ^Vhat did you do with the six
dollars?’

‘Why, Clare! I can’t tell you now, dear. "Why didn’t you ask
at the time?’

‘Oh, my God!’ Father groaned.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Mother. ‘I spent four dollars and a
half for that nice new umbrella I told you I wanted, and you
said I didn’t need a new one, but I did, very much.’

Father vvrote ‘New Umbrella for Vmnie’ in his notebook.

‘And that must have been the week,’ Mother went on, ‘that I
paid for two extra days’ washing, so that was two dollars more

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES? 23I

out of it, which makes it six-fifty. There’s another fifty cents you
owe me.’

T don’t owe >ou anythmg,’ Father said. Tou have managed
to turn a coffee-pot for me into an umbrella for you No matter
what I give you money for, you buy something else with it, and
if this is to keep on I might as well not keep account books at all.
I’m not made of money. You seem to think I have only to put
my hand in my pocket to get some.’

Mother not only thought this, she knew it. His wallet %vas
alwap full. That was the pro\ oking part of it - she knew he had
the money right there, but she had to argue it out of him.

*^Vell, you can put your hand in your pocket and give me that
dollar-fifty this minute,’ she said.

Father said he didn’t have a dollar-fifty to spare and tried to
get back to his desk, but Mother wouldn’t let him go till he paid
her. She said she wouldn’t put up %vith mjustice.

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES?

ROGER WILLIAM RIIS

Ix ALL the history of human habit, there have been few
changes so remarkable as the tidal-wave increase of cigarette
smokmg. This habit has laid hold upon the world to an extent
which we do not begin to realise, and with effects which we
certainly do not understand.

"^Vhat is this substance which we breathe into our mouths and
lungs in such stupendous clouds? It contains a number of
ominous-sounding chemicals. Medical men, however, have not
proved a case against them. But tivo of the chermcals are
under grave suspicion: benzo-p>Tene, which chiefly affects the
repiratory tract, and nicotine.

Nicotme is the essential mgredient of tobacco. It is what
makes tobacco tobacco, and not just another weed.

IMien one smokes, most of the mcotine escapes mto the air.
About a third gets into the mouth, where a httle is absorbed Of
what goes into the lungs, perhaps a fifth is absorbed. The efiect

Ftrsi in *TJie ResSer's Di^es? in 1930

reader’s digest omnibus

232

of smoking a cigar is equal to. that of four or five cigarettes A
pipe gives one a trifle more nicotine than does a cigar.

The hotter the burning surface, the more nicotine is taken
into the system. Thus, the faster one smokes, the more nicotine
one gets; smoking twice as fast results in ten times as much
nicotine. And the closer to the end of a cigarette one smokes, the
more nicotine also, because the butt, having filtered the first
part of the cigarette, has more than its share of nicotine.

in pure form nicotine is a violent poison. One drop on a
rabbit’s skm throws the rabbit into instant shock. The nicotine
content of a trifle more than two cigarettes, if injected into the
blood-stream, would kill a smoker swiftly. If you smoke a
packet of twenty a day, you inhale 400 milligrams of nicotine a
week, which in a single injection would kill you quick as a
bullet.

In factories which make nicotine insecticides, cases of acute
poisoning occur now and then. One worker sat on a stool the
concave seat of which held a little spilled nicotine. In less than
two minutes he fell to the floor, blue in the face, apparently
dead. Rushed to the hospital, he recovered quickly, as one does
from light nicotine poisoning. But when he returned to.the shop
and put on those mcotine-soaked trousers again, again he fell
headlong on the ground, and had to be revived a second time.

Aware that nicotine is a killer, men have tried for years to
keep It out of their systems while still enjoying the smoke. All
types of artificial filters take out some nicotine. The kind which
uses another cigarette as a filter is said to remove 70 per cent;
the kind which uses a silica-gel cartridge removes 60 per cent.
But with a filter one is likely tO smoke a cigarette until it is
shorter than if a filter had not been used - usually 20 per cent
shorter - and that extra length is the nicotine-filled butt.

Tests of various popular brands show that the average nico-
tine content of Virginia-blend cigarettes is around six per cent;
of Turkish cigarettes, one and a half per cent; of the so-called
‘denicotinised’ cigarettes, just over one per cent; and, strangely
enough, of the strong-lookmg West Indian cigarettes, least of all
- '86 per cent.

In the 400 thousand million cigarettes Americans smoke each
year there are nearly 23 milhon gallons of nicotine. Adimnistered
with precision, this is enough to kill a thousand times the

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES? 233

population of the United States - a wld idea, of course, but
nevertheless suggestive of nicotine’s lethal power.

If nicotine is such a poison, then why doesn’t smoking kill us?
Partly because the remarkably adjustable human body can
gradually bmlt up a tolerance for larger and lai^er doses of
poison; partly because, in smoke, it is not accumulated in
sufficient quantities Just what the harmful effects of smoking
are, the reader iitII judge for himself from the foUowang
evidence.

Do cigarettes irritate the throat? Yes, say some physicians.
But other physicians say they don’t. This conflict of expert
opinion matters a great deal to smokers Let us weigh vanous
opinions and the factual expenence back of them

First, no doctor claims that smoking soothes the throat. The
argument, as an editorial in The Journal of the American Medical
Association puts it, hinges on ‘the extent to which cigarettes
imtate the throat.’

If you smoke a packet of twenty a day, you take in 840 cubic
centimetres of tobacco tar in a year. That means that you have
drenched your throat and lungs with 27 fluid ounces of tobacco
tar containmg benzo-pjTene.

The brown stain in filters or on your handkerchief when you
blow smoke through it is not nicotine, for mcotine is colourless;
It is incompletely burned tar products, hke the soot m a
chimney. Many physicians suspect that its mam constituent,
benzo-pvTene, though an irritant rather than a poison, is a
greater threat to heai^y smokers than nicotine.

It matters far more how you smoke than ivhat you smoke,
stated Dr Arthur ^V. Proetz, nose and throat specialist of
Washmgton University: whether you puff briskly or gently,
how far doira the butt you smoke, how long y^ou hold the smoke
in the mouth and lungs Rapid smoking, reports Major C W.
Crampton in The Military Surgeon, ‘greatly increases the irrita-
tion’ because it bnngs the smoke into the mouth at temperatures
up to 135® Fahrenheit.

On the other hand, in heanngs before the U S Government
Trade Commission, Dr Alvan L. Barach of New York, a witness
for a cigarette manufacturer, asserted ‘I don’t beheve cigarette
smoking produces any damage with respect to the lungs . I don’t
beheve so-caUed cigarette cough is a reahty.’

reader’s digest omnibus

234

Yet there is probably no steady smoker who is not convinced
that smoking does irritate his throat.

Do cigarettes aifect the stomach and digestion? Every smoker
has noticed that a cigarette seems able to still the pangs of
hunger for a while. This is not a delusion. The sensation of
hunger is caused by contractions of the stomach walls and
smoking can suppress these contractions.

By the same process, smoking interferes with the appetite and
thereby with good nutrition. ‘We all have friends who have quit
smoking and have promptly gained in weight and look like new
persons,’ says Dr Walter C. Alvarez, editor of Gastroenterology and
specialist at the Mayo Clinic- ‘WTien a man smokes excessively
he is less likely to eat well.’

Excessive smoking may cause gastritis. By favouring an
accumulation of acid secretions, it brings about heartburn. Relief
comes in a matter of hours after the smoking stops.

Excess acidity of the stomach provides the kind of climate
ulcers hke. The most recent work in this field, done by New York
University, showed that patients who continued to smoke during
treatment for their peptic ulcers had more relapses than those
who did not, or those who had never smoked at all.

At most clinics ulcer patients are told not to smoke. In Boston
doctors had an interesting case some years ago, a man who had
all the symptoms of duodenzd ulcer. Even the X-ray showed it.
But an operation found no ulcer at all. The patient stopped
smoking, under orders, and his ‘ulcer’ left him. Three months
later, feeling quite well, he took up smoking again, and back
came the ‘ulcer’. This time, however, the doctors ordered him
off cigarettes completely. Smce he stopped smoking, he has had
no more ‘ulcers’.

Anti-tobacco crusaders assert that pregnant women should
never smoke. Doctors have worked on this point for years and
are clearer about it than about almost any other agiect of
smoking. The conclusion : Smoking does not do pregnant women
any more harm, or any different harm, than it does anyone
else.

Two pediatricians in Philadelphia analysed mothers’ milk for
nicotine content. They found 1*4 parts in ten million among
moderate smokers, 4*7 parts among heavy smokers. But they
could detect no effect whatsoever on the babies.

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES? 235

Is smoking bad for athletes? INTiere sta^Tng power is de-
manded, tobacco lowers athletic performance. At Aldershot
in England a three-mile cross-country run is a reqmred
event. Over seven years the performance of almost 2,000
men was analysed, in groups of heavy smokers, moderate
smokers, non-smokers.

The heavy smokers, eight per cent of the total, drew nine per
cent of the last ten places, but only five per cent of the first ten
The moderate smokers, 73 per cent of the total, got 62 per cent
of the first places and 83 per cent of the last places The non-
smokers, 18 per cent of the total, took 32 per cent of the firsts
and only seven per cent of the lasts.

Non-smokers, in four years at Yale University, grew more in
height and weight and lung capadty than did their smoking
colleagues. The mcrease in chest development of the abstainers
ivas 77 per cent better, their increase m height 24 per cent
greater.

Athletic coaches are almost unanimous in saying that muscular
power IS lowered and fatigue begins earher m smokers.

^STiat does tobacco do to the heart’ As to the long-run efiects,
medical opimons difier. As to the immediate effects of cigarette
smokmg upon the mechanism of the heart and upon the artenes
and veins, there is no difierence of opinion, for these effects are
easy to obseri'c and measure.

Smoking may speed the pulse by as much as 28 beats per
minute. In this respect individuals vary, and the same individual
vanes at different times. The average increase in pulse due to
smoking is ten beats.

Smoking can produce arrhythmia, an irregular stop and
jump of the heart which often thoroughly frightens its owner.
The puke of an unborn baby is raised when the mother smokes.
Habitual smokers have a 50 per cent higher incidence of
palpitation of the heart than non-smokers.

Smoking raises the blood pressure, markedly and quickly.
The higher your blood pressure k, the more sharply does
tobacco lift it. Apparently the blood pressure does not develop
any tolerance for tobacco, as does the digestive system Never-
theless, smoking does not cause permanent high blood pressure
"When the smoking stops, the pressure falk slow'ly to normal.

Smoking constncts the blood-vessek, especially those of the

236 reader’s digest omnibus

feet and hands. The smaller the blood-vessel the tighter is it
constncted, and often smoking closes the tiny vessels under the
fingernails entirely. As soon as one starts a cigarette, the rate of
blood flow in the hands decreases to less than half normal, and
it stays down for about an hour.

The effect of this constriction is curious. The temperature of
hands and feet drops. In recent hospital-controlled eiqieriments
practically all the subjects who inhaled showed a defimte drop
in surface temperature at the fingertips The drop averaged 5*33
degrees, was frequently more than 10 degrees, and occasionally
as much as 15*5.

Nicotine constricts the veins; alcohol dilates them. AMien ive
drink and smoke at the same time, we are in effect prodding
ourselves ivith a pitchfork to get a lift and beating ourselves on
the head with a club to offset it. Hence the popular belief that
taking a drink offsets the effect of a cigarette. Drs Roth and
Sheard went into this, making 12 1 tests on 65 persons. The
winner was nicotine; it was more potent than alcohol; ‘the
constricting effects of smoking cannot be prevented by alcohol’.

Buerger’s disease - fortunately rather uncommon - is charac-
terised by loss of circulation in hands and feet, sometimes so
serious that gangrene may form and amputation be necessary.
Doctors are cautious souls and do not say that smoking causes
Buerger’s disease. But in a study of 1,000 sufferers from Buerger’s
disease 1,000 turned out to be smokers; and of another 1,400
cases checked at Mt Sinai Hospital, New York, 1,400 were
smokers. A group of 100 cases was studied for more than ten
years, in all of them the disease was arrested when smoking
stopped. Dr Irving ^ Vright reports that in 1 00 consecutive cases
amputation was avoided in 97 cases, but was necessary in three
- the only three who would not stop smoking. Only a few isolated
cases have ever been reported among non-smokers.

No more vivid and dismaymg comment on the strength of
habit could be imagined than the reaction of one Buerger’s
patient, who was told repeatedly that he must choose between
smoking and progressive amputation of feet and hands. Some
years later one of the doctors was hailed on the street by an
armless, legless beggar on a little wheeled platform.

‘Hey, Doc! Remember me? Say, be a good scout, light a
cigarette for me and stick it in my mouth, will you?’

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES? 237

There is no proof that smoking causes heart disease But there
is evidence that heart disease is more prevalent among smokers
than among non-smokers, and that smoking may mtensif)'
eMSting heart disease.

Doctors selected i,ooo men over 40 who smoked and 1,000
who did not smoke. Of the non-smokers under 50, one per cent
had coronary' disease, of the smokers 4 8 per cent. Of Ae non-
smokers in age group 50-60, 2 6 per cent had coronary disease,
of the smokers 6 2 per cent.

Virginia doctors, in an article on angina pectoris, point
out that ‘coronary disease develops before the seventh decade
significantly more often in smokers than m non-smokers’

"WTiat does all this add up to^ The chief difference of opinion
IS as to how much damage smoking does to the heart All doctors
agree it can damage sick hearts It is, in short, never a help and
often a menace.

■Will cigarettes induce cancer? ‘For every expert who blames
tobacco for the increase in cancer of the lung,’ says Dr Charles
S. Cameron, medical director of the American Cancer Society,
‘there is another who says that tobacco is not the cause’.
The ACS formally states that there is no answer generally
accepted as scientifically vahd. The question is being examined
c£u-efully, UTthin a year there may be ‘sufiBcient data for
pubhcation*.

This probably refers to the most extensive and reliable
research yet made in this field, which is nmv being completed
by Dr Evarts Graham and Ernest \Vynder, one of his semor
medical students at AVashington Umversity, St Louis Dr
Graham’s studies will cover close to 2,000 persons It is expected
to show that over 95 per cent of patients with lung cancer smoke
a packet of cigarettes a day or more, and have done so for many
years.

‘^Ylll you be able to say clearly that smoking causes lung
cancer?’ I asked. Dr Graham shook his head.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘but we will say that it is curious how very
few non-smokers develop lung cancer.’

‘Very few'’ is one-half of one per cent of the \ictims of this
disease. This contrasts with the 95 per cent who are steady
smokers.

Cancer of the lung. Dr Graham stresses, has shown a shocking

reader’s digest omnibus

238

increase in the last 35 years. ‘As a possible cause,’ he says, ‘we
must look for some factor in our civilisation which has shown a
similar increase. We eliminated carbon monoxide after examining
traffic policemen who breathe it in large quantities.’

Dr Alton Ochsner of the Ochsner Clinic m New Orleans says:
‘Twenty-five years ago I saw only one cancer of the lung in four
years. In the last 15 years I have seen thousands. I am con-
vinced that there is a definite relationship between smoking and
cancer of the lung.’

It is generally agreed that cancer of the mouth, tongue and
lips is unduly prevalent among smokers. Researchers in widely
separated areas have come independently to the same conclu-
sion: that the majority of victims of cancer of the tongue are
excessive users of tobacco, that pipe smokers who develop lip
cancer get it at the spot where the pipe has always rested, and
that tobacco chewers, if they develop cancer, develop it at the
place where the tobacco has been held.

Gan smoking shorten your life? Some ten years ago the late
Dr Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, studied the
hfe span and smoking habits of 6,813 males. His carefully tabu-
lated statistics tell us that if you take 300 people at the age of 30
“100 of them non-smokers, 100 light smokers and 100 heavy
smokers -

Of the 100 non-smokers, 66 will reach 60 years.

Of the 100 hght smokers, 61 will reach 60.

Of the 100 heavy smokers, 46 will reach 60.

‘The conclusion is clear,’ said Pearl, ‘that smoking was statisti-
cally associated ivith impairment of hfe duration. The amount
of impairment increased as the amount of smoking mcreased.’^

Various doctors have quarrelled wth this -less with the
figures themselves than ivith the conclusion that smokmg had
something to do with the death rate. Dr Robert Feldt suggested
that the men who smoked most were under heavy strain and
worry, which caused them to smoke more, and was more likely
to cause them to die early than was the smoking itself. The kind
of people who smoke to excess, others have pointed out, are

1 Andrew Salter in his book, Conditioned Reflex Therajy, makes the following
computations based on Dr Pearl’s figures* ‘The heavy smoker pays wth 34 6
nunutes of hfe for each cigarette he smokes The twenty-a-day smoker pays with
ZJ.5 hours for each packet he smokes ’

HOW HARMFUL ARE CIGARETTES? 239

often temperamentally the kind of people who do other things
to excess also.

If tobacco is so deadly, ask the doubters, why don’t insurance
compames consider this in their rates^ Perhaps they will before
long, for they have been thinking about it. Harry Dingman, in
the bookiZts^ Appraisal, published by the U.S. National Under-
ivnter Company, gives some stnldng figures: Habitual smokers
have 62 per cent higher incidence of gas on the stomach, 65 per
cent higher incidence of colds, 76 per cent higher incidence of
nervousness, too per cent higher incidence of heartburn, 140 per
cent higher mcidence of laboured breathmg after exertion,
167 per cent higher mcidence of nose and throat irritation, and
300 per cent higher inadence of cough.

■\\Tiat does it all come down to?

Think over the many theoretical and actual kinds of
damage which smoking causes. Discount them all you want.
Then look in vain for any evidence of any measurable good
efiect Then speculate ivith incredulity as to why we go nght
on smoking.

It may properly be regretted that anti-tobacco folk are as
violent as they are m their statements A moderate, reasoning
person can ivith profit study the possible bad effects of smoking
and reduce his habit to normal temperance Extreme statements
do not encourage him to moderation.

That there are pleasant effects, not subject to measurement,
milhons of smokers are quick to agree. Dr E. J. Grace says. *I
know of no other substance m the entne realm of medicine
tvhich can so readily and promptly occupy all five senses and
produce a true smoke-screen against reahty Any habit which
has pow'er to produce a temporaiy' exhilaration will probably
persist until men and ivomen are more adequately prepared
mentally to cope ivith this complex civilisation

‘The problem is infinitely more profound than is apparent. In
spite of the well-knowm detrimental effects of smoking, the
temporary solace from it obscures the tragic end results which
come on insidiously over a period of many years.’

Every day, of course, people stop smokmg, and stay stopped.
Given a good enough reason, almost every confirmed smoker
will stop The trouble is that the good reason usually only comes
when (and because) it is too late for the smoker’s health.

reader’s digest omnibus

240

All this being so, why do not physicians warn their patients
more helpfully about smoking^ Because doctors are human, too,
and many of them smoke; because many of them therefore
hesitate to believe the worst about the friendly little cigarette;
and, as one physician noted sadly, ‘because forbidding tobaceo
makes the doctor unpopular.’

It is an obvious fact that those physicians who are most con-
cerned about the dangerous effects of smoking are those who
have had greatest personal experience %vith research into those
effects.

A word of personal testimony. 'WTien I began research for this
article, I was smoking 40 cigarettes a day. As I got into the
subject, I found that number dropping. As I finish the article, I
am smoking ten a day. I’d like to smoke more, but my investiga-
tion of the subject had convinced me that smoking is dangerous
an 4 , worse - stupid. FmaUy, I enjoy my ten cigarettes ever so
much more than I did the 40!

To me. It all adds up to this* smoking is a very pleasant, very
foolish habit. Most people can indulge in it wth no apparent
damage. Eight cigarettes a day, apparently, harm no normal
person. No one should indulge in smoking as much as he wants
to. Everyone should smoke less, if only for the reason that one
enjoys it more.

COMIC RELIEF

"Walter Pidgeon’s Aunt Nan — an old lady who hves in
Canada — ^is one woman who is not impressed by the
actor’s charms. She always wanted Walter to become a
lawyer, or at lezist something more respectable than an
actor. So when she read in the papers that he had
been ranked second to President Gonant of Harvard
among ‘The Ten Best-Dressed Men in Amenca,’ she
wrote:

‘Dear Nephew: I am glad to see you finally associated
with an intellectual. Kindly thank your tailor for
me.’

HOW TO GUESS YOUR AGE

Condensed from Collier's
COREY FORD

It seems to me that they are bmldmg staircases steeper than
they used to- The risers are higher, or there are more of them,
or something At any rate it is getting harder to make two steps
at a time. Nowadays it is all I can do to make one step at a
time.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the small print they’re using
New'spapers are getting farther and farther away when I hold
them, and I have to sqmnt to make them out. The other day I
had to back half-way out of a telephone booth m order to read
the number on the com box It is ridiculous to suggest that a
person of my age needs glasses, but the only other way I can find
out what’s gomg on is to have somebody read aloud to me, and
that’s not satisfactor)' because people speak in such low voices
these daj'S that I can’t hear them very well

Evei^Tlung is farther than it used to be. It’s twice the distance
from my house to the station now, and they’ve added a fair-sized
hill that I never noticed before. The trains leave sooner, too.
I’ve given up runnmg for them, because they start faster when
I trj' to catch them.

TTiey don’t put the same material into clothes any more,
either. All my suits have a tendency to shrink, especially round
the waist or in the seat of the pants, and the laces they put in
shoes noi\ada)s are much harder to reach.

Even the weather is changing. It’s getting colder in winter,
and the summers are hotter than they used to be. I’d go away,
if It wasn’t so far. Snow' is heaiier w'hen I try to shovel it
Draughts are more sev'cre, too It must be the way they build
w'mdows now.

People are younger than they used to be when I was their
age. I went back recently to an alumni reunion at the college I
graduated from in 1923 and I was shocked to see the mere tots

First pu&^ishei in *T)ie Reader*s XHjesf in 1950

241

reader’s digest omnibus

242

they’re admitting as students. They seem to be more pohte than
m my time, though; several undergraduates called me ‘Sir’,
and one of them asked me if he could help me across the
street.

On the other hand, people my o\vn age are so much older
than I am. I realise that my generation is approaching middle
age (roughly the period betvveen 21 and no), but there is no
excuse for my classmates tottering into advanced senility. I ran

George,’ I sziid.

‘It’s this modem food,’ George said. ‘It seems to be more
fattening.’

‘How long since I’ve seen you, George^’ I said. ‘Must be
many years.’

‘I think the last time was right after the election,’ said
George.

‘WTiat election was that?’

George thought a moment, ‘The one in 1924,’ he said.

I ordered a couple more Martinis. ‘Have you noticed these
Martims are weaker than they used to be?’

‘It isn’t like the good old days,’ George said. ‘Remember
when we’d go down to the bar and order some orange blossoms,
and maybe pick up a couple of flappers^ Hot diggety*’

‘You used to be qmte a cake-walker, George,’ I said. ‘Do you
still do the black bottom?’

genius: its cause and care 243

*I put on too much weight,’ said George. ‘This food noi\ adays
seems to be more fattening.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘You mentioned that just a minute ago.’

‘Did I?’ said George.

‘How about another Martini^’ I said ‘Have you noticed the
Martinis aren’t as strong as they used to be^’

‘Yeah,’ said George. ‘You said that before.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

I got to thinking about poor old George while I was shawng
this morning. I stopped for a moment and looked at my
reflection in the mirror. They don’t seem to use the same kind
of glass in mirrors any more.

GENIUS: ITS CAUSE AND CARE

Condensedfrom The New Republw
BRUCE BLIVEN

Why is intdhgence so unequally distributed^ ^\hy are some
men bold and others timid, some seemingly bom with a desire
to lead and others to follow, some egotistical and others
humble? Above aU, how does it happen that now and then
an individual is supremely gifted in some one field, so that
the ivorld is blessed ivith a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, an
Emstem^

Science does not yet know the answers to these questions,
but today it has come closer to the heart of the nddle
than ever before. In America’s research laboratories important
information bearing on the subject has recently been
unearthed.

Much of the advance that manland has made throughout
history has been achieved by persons of outstanding abihty,
who deserve the name of gemus Effective genius is the product
of two things in happy conjunction: the right sort of heredity
and the right sort of emdronment, especially in early life.
Intelligence is in the main hereditary, scientists believe, though

Ftrsf puUtiked «n *The Utaie^s in 1941

reader’s digest omnibus

244

they are not yet sure enough to be dogmatic. When it is
changed by environment, in most cases it is because the
individual does not do justice to himself in certain surroundings
and under certain conditions. Personality, on the other hand, is
almost entirely the result of environmental factors, particularly
in infancy and childhood. There may be hereditary factors
apart from sheer intelligence; but science believes that they are
ummportant compared with such things as imitation of one’s
elders, discipline, and early attachments and repulsions regard-
ing other persons.

This stress upon environment represents a recent change of
emphasis on the part of science. Not long ago, many experts
were inchned to take a rigidly mechanistic view of the human
being. He was considered the victim of his glands. ‘We used to
hear a good deal about glands regulating personality,’ said
a great psychiatrist. ‘Today you might almost with equal
appropriateness talk about “personality regulating glands”.
Each influences the other in profound and subtle ways.’ The
new knowledge makes early environment seem important, and
makes it vital that society should recognise individuals of
outstanding abihty early in life.

It is customary to refer to a person of high intelligence as a
genius, -without regard to what he has accomplished. Even
scientists do this in absentminded moments, though they prefer
the phrase, ‘gifted individual’. Roughly speaking, and using
popular termmology for the sake of convenience, anyone who
is 40 per cent more mtelhgent than the rank and file is a genius.
A genius is born, almost always, of parents of superior intelli-
gence; and his children also are usually above normal. But
genius does not in-\{ariably beget genius.

More than a million individuals in the United States today
rate as geniuses by this definition, and approximately 2,700
rank in the very highest group. The abihties of thousands of
them are unrecogmsed, their potential usefulness partly or
wholly wasted. Some live and die humble members of the
community whose only public praise is, ‘he’s smart -for a
garbage collector’ or ‘she remembers more than 300 recipes
ivithout looking in the book’. How amazingly this is true is
shown by a recent experiment in Chicago’s bleak Negro quarter,
where 8,000 children were picked at random and their

GENIUS- ITS CAUSE AND CARE

245

inteUigence tested. More than 100 were markedly high on
the scale; 29 of these Negroes were mtelhgent enough to
qualify as gemuses.

How do the saentists know how many geniuses there are^
^NTiat is their standard for high intellectual poi\er’ To make a
rough definition, the scientist sa^-s that unusual mteihgencc
signifies a high degree of memory, strong powers of mental
co-ordination and logic, and the ability to summon these at
■will. Some years ago, speaalists began creating tests which,
when given to a large number of people, would indicate their
relative brightness - usually simple-soundmg questions (some-
times trick ones), easy puzzles, tests of memory like the
abihty to repeat seven or eight numbers read off haphazardly.
After hundreds of thousands of tests, the sdentists found that
they could establish a normal level of intelligence, which they
set at 100. K an mdivudual is 10 per cent below this norm he is
said to have an ‘intelligence quotient’ or I.Q,. of 90; if 20 per
cent above, an I.Q,. of 120, and so on.

In the early days, exaggerated claims were sometimes made
for these intelligence tests, especially by laymen who didn’t
understand them. Even today, the results should not be apphed
too rigidly. But there is no doubt that the tests do record
inteUigence and that their results are likely to correlate Avith
achievement.

One of the most fascinating researches of recent years was
an attempt to study the level of intelligence of great men by
estimating their childhood I.Q^ and correlating it with known
facts about the individual

Under the direction of Dr Catharine Cox of Stanford
Umversity (now Dr Catharine Miles of Yale), the names of
300 eminent men bom smce 1450 were compiled, and every
scrap of information regarding the hves of these individuals to
age 26 w-as assembled. Experts trained in testing inteUigence
went over all this evidence ^Ylth true scientific caution, the
experts refuse to say that the results reveal the actual intelli-
gence level of these individuals as adults. They will say that it
w-as not low er than the figure giv en.

Here are some of the most distinguished names of
history with their I.Q,. ratings as determmed by Dr Miles’

246

reader’s digest omnibus

200 (These are considered the supreme intelhgences of
modem times) : Galton, Goethe, John Stuart Alill.

190-195: Grotius, Leibmtz.

180-185: Bacon, Milton, Newton, Pitt, Voltaire.

1 70-1 75: Chatterton, Coleridge, Luther, Robert Peel,
Alexander Pope.

160-165: John Quincy Adams, Burke, Longfellow, Tennyson

150-155. Samuel Johnson, Mendelssohn, Mozart, George
Sand, Scott, Wordsworth.

140-145: John Adams, Emerson, Lincoln, Napoleon, Nelson,
Thackeray, Washington.

Genius is often associated ivith precocity, but not always
John Stuart Mill, the economist, learned Greek at three, studied
Plato at seven, and Latin, geometry and algebra at eight. "WTien
a little more than six, he wrote quite a creditable history of,
Rome. Goethe wrote his immortal Werther at 25, Milton had
composed what has been called the most beautiful ode in
Enghsh at 21; Schelhng formulated his philosophy at 20;
Raphael when one year older had painted the Granduca
Madonna; Peel was chief secretary for Ireland at 24.

Another piece of important evidence is the monumental study
of present-day genius made by Dr Lewis Terman of Stanford
University and his associates.

In the early ’20’s Dr Terman began looking for high in-
telhgence among schoolchildren of the U S, Pacific Coast. Out
of thousands who were given intelligence tests, about 1,500
possessed I Q.’s of 150 or more. At intervals ever since, most of
these 1,500 geniuses have been investigated afresh. On the
whole, these gifted children are domg much better than their
normal classmates. They marry early, get divorced less fre-
quently, their health is good. By the time they are 30 their
average income is §3,000 a year -far above that of their
normal classmates and remarkable when you remember that
these young people went to work during the depression. Quite
a number were eammg §12,000 or more. They had written
20 books, hundreds of magazine articles and had taken out 80
important patents.

In general, these gifted children, now grown up, have chosen
careers that might be expected. The men are lawyers, doctors.

GEXIUS: ITS CAUSE AJfD CARE

247

engineers, elergjinen, research experts. Som^ on the other hand,
are ino\'ie actors and jazzband players. One is a Walt Disney
artist, another a fox farmer. The girls are teachers, doctors,
nurses, office ivorkers, hbrarians, artists, decorators, architects,
actresses, musicians, dancers The genius girls show less desire
to follow a career than the gemus bo^T. About half the girls are
married and follow the conventional American cultural pattern.
Both boj's and girls marry people whose intelligence scores
about 25 points lower than their own.

Now comes the amazmg part of Dr Terman’s study. Of his
group of geniuses 25 per cent have made a far greater success
in life than the rest. Fiftj' per cent have done moderately ivell
and 25 per cent have done verj' badly. The men in the top
quarter earn two and one-third times as much as those in the
bottom quarter. The^* have married earlier, their wives are
more intelhgent and their divorce rate is only one-thurd as
high - all indications of successful li\Tng. The bottom quarter
contains men in humble situations -policeman, carpenter, filling-
station attendant, shop-walker. Here is an astonishing difference
betiveen two groups of high-scoring children, of equal intelli-
gence bj’ test, starting life side by side.

Dr Terman’s investigators foimd one important explanation
in the home environment and the personality it produces in a
child. In the top group nearly 57 per cent had fathers who were
professional men able to earn enough money to gi\e their
children stable and peaceful environment. The members of the
bottom group often came from homes where there was m-
securitv, poverty' and unhappiness. Manv of the parents were
foreign bom, struggling with an ahen culture. Their genius
children w ere held down by environment.

Dr Miles, summing up the facts about her 300 geniuses,
found characteristics common to nearly all They came from
‘good stock’, with a fairly high intelhgence among the parents.
Most of them had security , affection and imderstanding m early
life. Genius, Dr Miles found, is almost umversally kind, trast-
worthy, conscientious, persistent, physically and mentally
active, modest, not eager for pleasure, cool tempered. Genius is
as much above the commonalty of mankind in these traits as it
is in intelligence.

"What do the researches of Dr Terman and Dr Miles reveal

248 reader’s digest omnibus

that is useful to society? They show us that while high intelh-
gence is chiefly accident of birth, we can by proper training turn
a potential genius into an actual one, whose gifts are useful to
mankind. The most important factors m bringmg this about are,
first, incentive - livmg in a society that wants and appreciates
great ability - and, second, a sense of reassurance and security
from the earhest days. It is now scientifically proved that genius
does not need to be maladjusted, as was commonly supposed
‘Artistic temperament’ is the attitude of the spoiled child
carried over into adult life by a high-strung, gifted individual
who discovers he can get away with it. He might be more of a
genius without his tantrums.

The lesson is plain, and important. We need these rare
one-in-a-hundred-thousand mmds. We need to improve our
machinery for finding such individuals, and to care for them.
Evidence disproves the theory that great abihties thrive on
insecurity, unhappiness and fear. Wfiien they appear to it is
because the individual surmounts the obstacles.

This is not to say that a reasonable amount of poverty and
sharp disciplme are hot desirable; the lives of many great men
suggest that they are. Poverty is not necessanly identical with
insecunty.

What is true of the geniuses applies also to the rest of us. Both
the intelhgence and the personahty of the average man function
far better under favourable conditions. This may seem a truism,
but It IS only halfreahsed by parents, teachers, and correctional
institutions Science has now given us the final and urgent
reason why we should put our collective brains to work and
give the maximum amount of traimng, useful experience,
security and a sense of power and success to all the rising
generation.

Many a woman who can’t add can certainly distract . . .
Some women take the diaper as others take the veil. • . .
She has not only the seal of his approval, but the mink
also . . . She’s the sort of bndge partner who calls a spade
two spades.

SURGERY IN A SUBMARINE

Condensed from The Chicago Daily Xews
GEORGE WELLER

‘They are givmg him ether now/ they whispered back in die
aft torpedo rooms. ‘He’s gone under and they’re gettmg ready
to cut him open ’

One man went fonvard. ‘Keep her steady, Jake,’ he said to
the man handhng the bow diving planes. ‘They've just made
the first cut. The^re feeling around for it now ’

‘They* were a httle group of men with their arms thrust into
reversed p)jama coats Gauze bandages hid all expression
except the tensit}' in their eyes. ‘Id was an acute appendix
inside Dean Rector of Chautauqua, Kansas The stabbing pains
had become unendurable the day before, w'hich was Rector’s
birthday. He was ig.

The big depth gauge that looks like a factory clock showed
where they were. They were below the surface Above them
were enemy w'aters crossed and recrossed by the whirring
propellers of Jap destroyers.

The nearest naval surgeon w as thousands of miles away. There
was just one way to prevent the appendix fi"om burstmg and
that was for the creiv to operate upon their shipmate themselves
And that’s what they did.

The chief surgeon was a 23-year-old pharmacist’s mate,

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249

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250

^NTieeler Lipes, from New Castle, Virginia, who had served
three years m the Philadelphia naval hospital. His speciality
was operating a machine that registers heartbeats, but he had
seen naval doctors take out one or two appendices.

There was difficulty about the ether. Below the surface,
pressure inside a boat is above the atmospheric pressure. More
ether is absorbed under pressure. They did not know how long
the operation would last or whether there would be enough
ether to keep the patient under.

They decided to operate on the table in the officers’ wardroom,
which in the roomiest American submarine is approximately
the size of a railway sleeping compartment. It is flanked by
bench seats attached to the %valls and the table occupies the
whole room - you enter with knees already bent to sit down
The table was just long enough so that the patient’s feet did
not hang over.

It was probably the most democratic surgical operation ever
performed. Everybody from box-plane man to the cook in the
galley knew his role. The cook pro\'ided the ether mask — an
inverted tea strainer covered with gauze. The young surgeon
had as his staff of fellow physicians men his senior in age and
rank. His anaesthetist was Lieutenant Franz Hoskins, com-
munications officer.

Before they carried Rector to the wardroom, the submarine
captain. Lieutenant Commander W. B. Ferrall of Pittsburgh,
asked Lipes to have a talk with the patient. ‘Look, Dean,’ said
Lipes, ‘I never did anything like this before. You don’t have
much of a chance to pull through, anyhow. What do you say^’

‘I know how it is, Doc,’ said Rector. ‘Let’s get going.’

It was the first time m his life that anybody had called Lipes
‘Doc’.

The operating staff adjusted gauze masks and members of
the engine-room crew pulled tight their reversed pyjama coats
The tools laid out were far from perfect or complete for a major
operation. The scalpel, for instance, had no handle. But
submariners are used to ‘rigging’ thmgs. The medicine chest
had plenty of haemostats - small pincers used for closing blood-
vessels - and the machinist rigged a handle for the scalpel from
one of these.

They ground up sulphanilamide tablets to use as an antiseptic.

SURGERY IN A SUBMARINE

251

But there was no means of holding open the wound after the
incision had been made Surgical tools used for this are called
‘muscular retractors’. Nothmg m the medicine chest gave the
answer, so they got some soft-metal tablespoons from the
galley. They bent these at right angles and had their retractors

Stenhsers^ They went to one of the greasy copper-coloured
torpedoes waiting beside the tubes, milked alcohol ftom the
torpedo mechanism and used it as weU as boiling water.

The moment for the operation had come Rector, very pale,
stretched himself out on the table.

Rubber gloves dipped m torpedo juice were drawn upon the
youthful Doc’s hands. The fingers were too long. The rubber
ends dnbbled limply over. ‘You look like Mickey Mouse, Doc,’
said one onlooker

Lipes gnnned behind the gauze He looked into his assistant’s
eyes, nodded, and Hoskms put the mask down over Rector’s
face

The surgeon, folloivmg the ancient hand rule, put his httle
finger on Rector’s umbilicus, his thumb on the point of the hip
bone and, droppmg his mdex finger straight down, found the
point where he intended to cut.

At his side stood his assistant surgeon, Lieutenant Norvell
Ward, whose job was to place tablespoons in Rector’s side as
Lipes cut through successive layers of muscles. Engmeering
officer Lieutenant Charles S. Mannmg was what is knoivn in
formal operating rooms as ‘circulating nurse’. He saw that
packets of sterile dressings kept coming and that the torpedo
alcohol and boding water arrived regularly from the g^ley.
Skipper Ferrall was ‘recorder’. It was his job to keep count of
the sponges and tablespoons that went into Rector.

It took Lipes nearly 20 minutes to find the appendix ‘I have
tried one side of the caecum,* he whispered after the first few
minutes ‘Now I’m trymg the other ’

Whispered bulletins seeped back to the engine room and the
crew’s quarters ‘The Doc has tried one side of somethmg and
now is trying the other side.’

After further search, Lipes whispered, ‘I think I’ve got it. It’s
curled way mto the bhnd gut.’

Now his shipmate’s life was completely in his hands

‘Two more sponges.’

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252

‘Two sponges at 1445 hours,’ wrote the ^Skipper on his
note-pad.

‘More flashlights and another battle lantern,’ demanded
Lipes.

The patient’s face began to grimace. ‘More ether,’ ordered
the Doc.

Hoskms looked doubtful. The ether was running low. But
once again the gauze was soaked. The fumes mounted, making
the staff giddy.

Finally came the moment when the Doc pointed towards the
needle threaded with 20-day chromic catgut. One by one the
sponges and tablespoons came out. The Skipper nudged Lipes
and pointed to the tally, one spoon was missing. Lipes reached
into the incision for the last time, withdrew the spoon and
closed the incision. He cut the thread with a pair of nail
scissors. Just then the last can of ether went dry.

They carried Rector to a bunk. Half an hour later he opened
his eyes and said, ‘I’m stiU in there pitching.’

It had taken the amateurs about two and one half hours for
an operation ordinarily requiring 45 minutes ‘It was not one
of those “snappy valve” appendixes,’ Lipes said apologetically.

Thirteen days later. Rector was again manmng the battie
phones And in a bottle on the submarine’s shelves swayed the
first appendix ever knoivn to have been removed below enemy
waters.

WHAT IF I HAD REFUSED?

AGNES ROTHERY

Commencement Day m any university town is always a time
of confusion, scheduled events and of expected and not-expected
visitors On one June day in Charlottesi^le, Virgima, during the
war, It seemed to me that there had been a greater hubbub than
usual. The Lawn and the streets were teeming. Boys were
constantly drifting in and out of our house. Like other professors’
homes, ours had always been open to the students, and although

Firrf published m ‘The Seadet's Digest" in 1947

WHAT IF I HAD REFUSED?

253

I wasn’t good at remembering tbeir names I was always glad to
see them.

I had recently ■\vritten a book about the Umversity of
Vmginia, and our home and hfe there. Many former students,
familiar with the house and garden, had brought copies of
A Fitting Habitation to be autographed, and parents had sent
copies asking me to -write a word m each before they mailed it
to sons overseas. While all this %vas deeply gratifying, still it
lengthened my already crowded worldng hours

On Commencement Day the number of casual callers had
reached an all-time high, and I had barely had time to get
ready for the ceremony My husband was in the car, honking
for me to hurr)'. I was just about to rush out of the house when
the telephone rang and a woman’s voice asked me if I would
autograph a copy of my book for her She said that she and her
husband had motored from Montana; they would have to leave
I immediately after the Commencement exercises, and that this
would be their only chance to catch me. They said they were
only a few blocks from our home.

My first impuke was to shout ‘No’ and slam down the receiver,
but somehow I muted my exasperation and rephed, rather
coldly, that if they would come at once I would see them. Then
I himg up, telhng myself I was an idiot to let myself be thus
imposed upon

My husband had to play the organ at the exercises so I sent
him on his -way, telhng him that I’d come later in a taxi. But
at busy hours in our toivn one often cannot get a taxi at all, and
I pictured myself trailmg down the hot road in my white
shppers and long dress, and am-vmg dusty, angry and con-
spicuously late.

Then I waited in our doorway until a Montana car appeared
and a prettily dressed woman and a tall man wth a tanned and
tired face got out. They were a typical American middle-aged
couple, ob-viously prosperous but qmte unpretentious. They
mtroduced themselves as Mi: and Mrs Graham

INTien I had greeted them and led them mto the Uving room
they stood for a moment quite still and frankly surveyed the
room, then went over to the open door and looked out mto the
garden. Their scrutiny was so absorbed that in spite of my
impatience I let a few moments pass irithout speaking.

reader’s digest omnibus

254

Finally the man turned to me and handed me a copy of
my book. ‘My wife and I would appreciate it if you would
wnte your name m it,’ he said. ‘Our son often told us about
coming, to your charmmg house, and we wanted to see it
ourselves.’

‘We have spent all day going over the University,’ added his
wife. ‘We have seen Jack’s room, and the library, the athletic
grounds, his classrooms - everything.’

‘What would you like me to write in the book^’ I asked
patiently, taking up my pen.

‘Just his name -Jack Graham -and yours, if you please,’
said the man.

I did this and handed him the book, wondering nervously how
much longer they would linger, and wondering why they
seemed so reluctant to take their leave.

‘Is your son graduating?’ I asked.

‘Our son would have graduated today,’ said the man in his
quiet voice. ‘He was killed a year ago at Saipan.’

‘So we came to attend his Commencement, to see all the
places here that he loved so much - especially your home,’ said
the woman.

Now it was I who had not a word to say. Tears came to my
eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I gulped awkwardly and said,
‘Here I am crying, and you two are perfectly calm'’

‘We -we finished our crying a long time ago,’ said the
woman simply.

I was still blinded with tears as I walked with them to their
car, but it was with steady voices that they thanked me again
and said goodbye.

As I watched the car move down the drive I could picture
them in the amphitheatre, looking doivn at the dark-capped
heads of the graduating class packed in the front rows. They
would see the long line pass slowly up to the platform where
each student would receive his diploma. They would watch it
all with dry eyes, and although the hne would be closely filled
they would see one place in it which was empty.

Then suddenly, like a violent physical impact, a terrible
thought gnpped me:

What if, when I had answered the telephone, / had
said 'Mo I’

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

Condensed from The TaU Remew
H. L MENCKEN

The first Engbshman to notice an Amencamsm sneered at it
aloofly, thus setting a fashion that many of his countrymen have
been following ever since. He was one Francis Moore, a ruflian
who came to Georgia in 1735, and the word that upset him was
bluff, in the sense of ‘a chfl or headland with a broad precipitous
face’. He did not deign to argue against it, he simply dismissed
It as ‘barbarous’, and for nearly a century, when it was printed
at all in Great Britain, it was set off by sanitary quotation marks
But, in 1830, the eminent Sir Charles Lyell used it shamelessly
and from that day to this it has been a respectable if somewhat
unfamiliar word in England

Its history is the history of almost countless other Amen-
canisms They have been edging their way into English since
early colonial times, but only after running a gauntlet of opposi-
tion After the Revolution, that opposition took on the proportions
of a holy war. Never an American book came out that the
English reviewers did not belabour its vocabulary violently.
Even serious writers like Jefferson, John Marshall, NoahAVebster,
and John Quincy Adams got their share Jefferson’s crime was
that he had invented the verb to belittle It was, one may argue
plausibly, a very logical, useful, and perhaps even mfty word,
and 75 years later the pnssy Anthony Trollope was employing
it wthout apology. But in 1787 The London Remew roared.
‘'WTiat an expression' It may be an elegant one in Virginia, but
all we can do is to guess at its mcamng For shame, Mr Jefferson'
Freely we forgive your attacks upon our national character;
but for (he future spare, we beseech you, our mother tongue'’

The underscolang of guess was a fling in passing at another
foul Americanism It was the bebef of most Englahmen then,
as It is today, that the use of the verb in the sense of to suppose or
assume originated in this country. It is actually to be found, in

Ftrsi pvhtfsked in Tf Readers Dtgesf w 1936

255

reader’s digest omnibus

256

that meaning precisely, in Measure for Measure; nay, m Chaucer.
To advocate offers another example. It appeared in English in
the dark backward and abysm of time, but during the eighteenth
century it seems to have dropped out of general use. Towards
the end of the century it came into vogue in this country, and
soon made its way back to the land of its birth. It was received
with all the honours proper to an invasion of Asiatic cholera,
the reviews denouncing it as loutish, ‘Gothic’, and against God.

The heroic struggle to keep Americanisms out of Britain still
flourishes. A few years ago the Rt Rev Cyril Henry Gelding-
Bird, Assistant Bishop of Guildford and Archdeacon of Dorking,
was charged before the Famham (Surrey) magistrates \vith
applying speed-cop to a member of the mobile police. He denied
■with some heat that he had used the term, or an-ything else
so unseemly, but the magistrates apparently concluded that he
must have let it slip, for they took a serious view of his very
modest adventure in speeding, fined him ;^io, and suspended
his driving licence for three months.

Wflienever an Americanism comes publicly into question in
England, there are efibrts to track down its etymology, with
results that are sometimes extremely bizarre. In January 1935,
for example, the London Morning Post opened its columns to a
furious discussion of the verb-phrase, to get his goat. I content
myself with one of the explanations. ‘Among the Negroes in
Harlem it is the custom for each household to keep a goat to act
as general scavenger. Occasionally one man will steal another’s
goat, and the household debris then accumulates to the general
aimoyance.’ The truth is that to get his goat seems to be of
French origin, and in the form oi prendre sa chivre has been traced
back to the year 1585.

Occasionally, of course, genuine Amencanisms are claimed
as really English. In 1934 even the learned Dr G. T. Onions,"^
one of the editors of the great Oxford Dictionary, succumbed to
the madness by ofiering to find m the dictionary any alleged
Americanism that a reporter for the London Evening Mews could
name. The reporter began discreetly with fresh (m the sense of
saucy), to figure (in -the sense of to believe or conclude), and to gnll
(in the sense of to question), and Dr Onions duly found them all.
But when the reporter proceeded to rake-off, the editor had to
admit that the earliest example in the dictionary was irom an

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE 257

Amencan work, and when boloney and nerts were hurled at him
he blew up wth a bang.

In the modem Enghshman there seems to be very little of
that ecstasy iri word-makmg which so prodigiously engrossed
his Elizabethan forebears Shakespeare alone probably put more
new words into circulation than all the English writers since
Carlyle, and they were much better ones. The ideal over there
today is not picturesque and eidularating utterance, but correct
and reassuring utterance. At its best it shoivs excellent manners
and even a kind of melhfluous elegance, indeed, the English,
taking one ivith another, may be said to ivrite much better than
we do. But what they ivnte is seldom animated by anything
properly descnbable as bounce. It lacks novelty, vanety, audacity.

Herein lies the fundamental reason for the mtroduction of so
many Americanisms mto British English. They are adopted in
England simply because England has nothing so apt or pungent
to offer in competition irith them. His Reverence of Guildford
did not apply speed-cop to the mobile policeman as a voluntary act
of subversion ; he let it shp for the reason that it was an irresistibly
apposite and satisfying term

Confronted by the same novelty, Americans always manage
to fetch up a name for it that not only describes it but also
illummates it, whereas the English, since the Elizabethan stimu-
lant oozed out of them, have been content merely to catalogue
it. There ivas a bnlhant exemphfication of the two approaches
in the early days of railways. The Enghsh called the wedge-
shaped fender that was put in front of the first locomotives a
plough, which was almost exactly what it was, but the Americans
gave It the bold and racy appellation of cow-catcher For the
casting which gmdes the whe^ from one rail to another the
Enghsh coined the depressingly obvious name of crossing-plate,
the Americans, setting their imaginations free, called it
^fiog

The American rrwvte is much better than the English cinema;
so is radio much better than wireless, though it may be Latin,
and shock absorber vastly better than anti-bounce clip, and bouncer
than chucker-out, and chain store than multiple shop. Confronting
the immensely Amencan rubberneck. Dr J. Y. T. Greig of New-
castle could only exclaim ‘one of the best words ever coined!’
And in the face of lounge lizard, Horace Annesley VacheU fell

258 reader’s digest omnibus

silent like Sir Isaac Newton on the seashore, overwhelmed by
the solemn grandeur of the linguistic universe.

One finds m current American all the characters and tendencies
that marked the nch English of Shakespeare’s time - an eager
borro\vingfrom other languages, a bold and often very ingenious
use of metaphor, and a fine disdain of the barricades separating
the parts of speech. "We had already a large repertory of
synonyms for jail, but when the word hoosegow precipitated
Itself from the Spanish somewhere along the Rio Grande

it won quick currency. Bummer, coming in from the German, is
now clipped to bum. Buncombe, borrowed by the English as
bunkum, has bred bunco and bunk and to debunk at home.

There are constant complaints in the English newspapers
about the appearance of lawless American novelties in the
parliamentary debates, and in discourses from the sacred desk.
They begin to show themselves also in belles-lettres^ They even
pop up in the diatribes that revile them; the Englishman, con-
quered at last, can no longer protest against Americanisms
without using them. If only because of the greater weight of the
population behind it, the American form of English seems
destined to usurp the natural leadership of British English, and
to determine the general course of the language hereafter. But
its chief advantage in this struggle is the fact that its daring
experiments he in the grand tradition of English, and are signs
of its incurable normalcy and abounding vigour.

THE

MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER

I’VE MET

AUSTIN STRONG

I CAN see her now - a small woman in a blue dress, sitting
barefoot on the roof of the after-cabin of a trading schooner in
the South Seas. Her Panama hat, set at a rakish angle, shades
a face of breathtaking beauty. She is holding a large silvered

Ftrit publtshed tn 'The 'Rtsdei's DizesT tn 1946

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE^CHARAGTER I’VE MET 259

revolver in each hand, shootmg sharia wth deadly accuracj- as
they are caught aud hauled to the tafiTrail by excited sailors.

Recently Booth Tarkington MTote me: *I once \\-alked across
the lobby of the Claypool Hotel m Indianapohs wth her. The
proprietor of the hotel cigar-stand came exatedly at me after
I’d put her in the elevator, and said, “Excuse me, Mr Tarking-

ton, but, my God, tvho was that?” Effect of, \isibly, a personage'
Indeed she was a personage, yet she %\as httle known to the
world because she shunned the limehght.

Infinitely feminine, self-effacing and gentle, nevertheless she
gave the impression of holding a secret power not to be trifled
w^th 'ISTien her Scotch husband took her to Edinburgh to meet
his parents for the first time, he warned her that his father, a
famous engineer and designer of lighthouses, w'as an uncom-
promising Calvmist who ruled his household with an iron hand
She knew that she had to face a difficult situation, for the old
man had disapproved of his son’s marrying a woman who was
not only an American but W’as divorced But when they met
face to face, the dour old Scot w’as completely captured by her
beauty and astomshed to find a character as strong as his own

At dinner that first evenmg, findmg the roast overdone, he
lost his temper and shouted at the maids, cnnkhng in their
starched aprons. His daughter-in-law’ rose from her chair, her
face white and her eyes big wuth wTath, for nothing roused her
fur}’- more than injustice. ‘You are a spoiled old man,’ she said

26 o

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in a voice like water running under ice. ‘You are taking a cruel
advantage of these helpless people who cannot answer back. If
you ever again raise your voice against these faithful women I
shall instantly leave this house and never set foot in it as long
as I hve>’

Nonplussed, the old man stared at her in admiration. ‘Sit ye
doon, lassie,’ he said, laughing. ‘I see ye’re a stormy petrel*’
From then on peace reigned and he followed her like a tamed
and devoted lion.

Her blood was rich with the ivine of courage which she
inherited from her sturdy forebears - nine generations of Ameri-
can pioneers on both sides of her family. Her father, Jacob,
descended from the Dutch line bearing the honoured name
of Van de Gnft. He settled in the then backwoods toivn of
Indianapolis, Indiana, where he built his house with his oivn
hands, grew up ivith the thriving city and became a prosperous
lumber merchant. Her father’s friend Henry Ward Beecher
baptized his daughter, christemng her Frances Matilda.

After the failure of her first marriage, Fanny Van de Gnft
fell in love and married a young unknown wnter who was ill of
tuberculosis. She knew instinctively that he was a true genius
and that if she could but keep him alive she would give to the
world an immortal name. From then on for many years her hfe
was one long battle with the dark reaper, spent for ever wander-
ing about the world seeking a climate which would bnng her
husband health.

She fought a losing fight m many lands until advised to get
him on salt water and keep him there. Then with desperate
courage she took him to sea, enduring years of exile from
civilisation, bearing the responsibility of nursing him far away
from medical care as they wandered, m all kinds of ships, on
the vast, then uncharted Pacific. They sailed doivn through the
Dangerous Archipelago, the Marshalls, the Marquesas and the
Gilberts, daring hurricanes, savages and shipwreck.

A sensitive woman, she once had to live on a tiny trading
schooner \\'ith 15 men, exposed to a pitiless lack of privacy,
sleeping in the leaking after-cabin crowded \vith wet human
beings, fighting monster cockroaches bent on eating off her
eyebro^vs as she snatched at sleep between the squalls which
threatened to capsize the tiny craft.

THE MOST UXFORGETTABLE CHARACTER l’\nE MET 261

She slept on the floor beside her husband’s berth to be ready
in an instant to minister to him from a vial of medicme she kept
m the bosom of her dress. The Chinese cook often stepped on
her as he staggered across the tumbhng cabin to tend his
dancing pots and pans. l\Tien meraless tropic rain leaked
through the cabin roof she held an umbrella over her sleeping
husband and many a time she was roused to give first-aid to an
injured sailor, cutting the clotted hair from a bleedmg head or
binding a ram-soaked bandage round a smashed hand.

In spite of all these hardships she took heart, for she could
see that the mvahd was slowly regmning a measure of health
Someone saw her sitting on the foredcck of a sading vessel one
beautiful mommg, watching her husband standmg barefoot far
out on the plunging boivsprit, laughing excitedly as he tried to
spear darting fish. After years of lonely idgils in darkened rooms
she sau him now on his feet, a man of action, and for an mstant
tears filled her eyes. She had won through to \actory.

I knew her best in paradise, where I had the good fortune to
share the last years of their life together. Home from the sea at
last, their lonely wanderings came to an end on the beautiful
island of Upolu m the Samoan Archipelago where the benefi-
cent climate held out great promise for the health of her husband
There they lived among the gracious Samoan people, whom he
called ‘God’s best, hzs sweetest work.’

They built a large house m a clearing of the primseval forest
surrounded by giant trees bearing ferns and bnlhant coloured
orchids in their forks, the air wtis si\eetened by wild limes,
firangipam blossoms, ilang-ilang, and all the fragrant and lovely
flow'ers that grow in the jungle Here we dwelt at the foot of a
wooded mountain alive with bird song and the music of five
mountain torrents tumbhng headlong in their frantic haste to
reach the Pacific, which we could see three miles below' us over
descending treetops, a blue infinity spread across the skj'.

Fanny Van de Gnft’s pioneer blood beat faster w'hen they
bought 400 acres of cool, \irgin forest, 600 feet above the
sivdtering town of Apia on the beach Her husband was occupied
with his writing, and it was she who took complete command of
drawing the plans for the new home and superintendmg the
buildmg. She was a bom architect.

These w’ere the happiest four years of their hfe together.

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While the house was being built it was a deh'ght to watch her
directing the labourers, scaling high ladders, standing on sway-
ing scaffoldings - a tiny figure always dressed in blue, and
always wth a smart tilt to her Panama hat. Her mere presence
stimulated her devoted Samoan workmen to greater efforts.

Tall, slim, half-naked giants with the figures of young Greek
gods, flowered wreaths about their necLc, their close-cut hair
pow'dercd w'hite with slack lime, these gay youths were a hand-
some sight. A leader would suddenly lift his voice improvising a
song to her as he led a chanting chorus, the singers keeping
time as they w'orked tvith their saw's and their hammers. -

‘Let us build this palace for our High Chief Lady, for is she
not as beautiful as the little flying cloud which skims the sea’s
horizon at dawn^ Take warmng, you who are lazy, she hath
eyes round her lovely head; she is to be obeyed.’ She was com-
pletely unaware of the compliments they were singing to her
for she never mastered their language. This they knew and
considered a huge joke, making the forest echo with their
memment.

WTiile the work was going on they lived a Swiss Family
Robinson life in a small, hastily-built shack. ‘Among my dresses,*
she wTote a fiiend, ‘hang bridle straps; on the camphorwood
trunk which serves as my dressing-table, beside my comb and
toothbrush, is a collection of carpenter’s tools. On the walls
hang a carved spear, a revolver, stnngs of teeth of fish, beasts
and human beings, and necklaces made of shells. My little
cot-bed seems to have got into its place by mistake.’

She devised a small reservoir around a spring on the side of
our mountain and piped water down a quarter of a milfe to the
house, freeing us from depending upon rain captured in tanks
from our corrugated iron roof. Though Samoans did the actual
labour for her she worked wath the best of them, and on one
occasion I remember her laughing as she asked me to rub and
unlock her fingers made stiff by cementing the retaimng wall of
the reservoir.

Fanny was a woman of contradictions. Curiously timid before
strangers, she faced terrifying dangers with quiet courage, help-
lessly appealing, she had the gift of command, and was the kind
of person everyone turned to in an emergency. She could be
stem and severe when the occasion called for those qualities.

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET 263

but her favourite saying was. ‘To know all is to forgive all.’ A
fearless horsewoman, a first-rate shot, an author of distinction,
a sailor, a scientific gardener, a miraculous cook and an extra-
ordinary nurse. Loyalty was her shmmg trait and she v\ould
cling through good and evil report to those she loved. No
wonder a tough sea captain said of her. ‘She’s a great gentleman*’

She had an enchanting sense of humour and dearly lov'ed
badinage. Seldom laughing aloud, shejoined the general hilarity
with the running accompaniment of a low and breathless
chuckle. If It be true that our characters can be revealed by
the fnends we make, hers would be as hard to piece together as
a Chinese puzzle beachcombers, duchesses, the poet Shelley’s
son, an ex-saloonkeeper, good King Kalakaua of Hawaii; Cap-
tain Slocum, who arcumnavigated the globe alone in a small
boat, saihng 72 days out of his course to call on her in Samoa;
the novelist Henry James, the sculptor Auguste Rodin; John
Sargent, who painted her portrait, shy J M. Barrie, the play-
vmght, who had so little to say to so many, and so much to say
to her; the terrifying murderous King Tembinoka of Apamama,
who shot down unruly subjects to keep order on his atoll, and
who wept copiously when she left after a visit. A San Francisco
journalist who did not know her, after catching a glimpse of her
m a crowd, said, ‘I would recognise her m hashes of lightning
She was the one woman I can imagine a man being willing to
die for.’

I love to remember a Thanksgiving dinner when Vailima -
tis they called their home - was finally estabhshed. The beautiful
funuture and silver had been brought from Scotland I can see
the big living-room, 60 by 30 feet, its pohshed redwood walls
hung with paintings by Sargent and Hogarth. Unknown to us,
this was to be the last feast when we would all be together To
my mind it was the culmination, the crowning moment of this
valiant woman’s life of sacrifice, adventure and romance.

Dressed in black velvet and point lace, the sparkle from her
jewels v^ying with the happiness m her eyes, she made a radiant
figure at the foot of the long table ablaze vvTth silver candelabra,
cut crystal and flowers. Her dream had come true, she saw her
husband browm with health, tall and distinguished in the even-
ing dress of the tropics, white mess jacket, red sash, and black
trousers - a gay and brilliant host

264 reader’s digest omnibus

The lighted candles glowed on the faces around the table -
naval officers in their white uniformSj land commissioners, the
consuls and their wives. Samoan men, weanng the Royal Stuart
tartan lalted about their loins, hibiscus flowers behind their ears
and wreaths around their necks, their bro\vn bodies polished
with coconut oil scented %vith powdered sandalwood, served us
with quiet digmty.

This was mdeed a Thanksgiving dinner for her. She saw her
husband now at the height of his fame, successful and famous
beyond their dreams. In the decade and a half of their married
life the author of Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde had
written over 30 books. For his success he gave her credit m the
dedication of his last novel: ‘Take thou the writing; thine it is,
for who burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, held
still the target higher; chary of praise and prodig^ of counsel
. . . who but thou?’

A few days later her husband, apparently in full health, was
struck down ‘as if by the gods, in a clear and glorious hour.’ He
did not die of the disease against which his wife had battled,
but fi'om a stroke of apoplexy. His coffin was lashed to a long
saplmg and carried by grave Samoans to the summit of the
mountain he loved so well, and there he was buried.

A few nights later I happened to come around the verandah
and drew back as I caught a glimpse of Fanny Van de Gnft
Stevenson - my grandmother. She was standing in the moon-
light, looking up at the forest-covered mountain where her
husband lay ‘under the wide and starry sky’. They had been
together for 14 short years.

It was fitting that Robert Louis Stevenson should be buned
on a mountain peak and that his wife should join him there 20
years later, with his immortal tribute to her inscribed in bronze
upon the tomb they share together:

Teacher, tender comrade, wife,

A fellovu-farer true through life.

Heart-whole and soul-free;

The August Father gave to me.

TILLIE SCRUBBED ON

Drama in Everyday Life

WILLIAM F. MCDERMOTT AND KARL DETZER

When pretty, dark-eyed Terry Colangelo went to work as a
cub reporter on the GUcago Daily Times three years ago, one of
City Editor Karin Walsh’s instrucDons to her was: ‘Read everj'
word in the Times, every day.’

Terry did — and on the afternoon of lo October 1944 she
found Chicago’s story of the year in three lines of small tj'pe
among the classified advertisements. Circling the terse announce-
ment with black crayon, she placed it on 'Walsh’s desk*

§5,000 reward for killers of OflScer Lundy on g December

1932. Gall Gro. 1758, 12-7 p m.

‘Might be a story behind it,’ she suggested.

"Walsh agreed, and called reporter Jim McGuire, who had
once been a detecDve and ivho had dug out some difficult
crime stories for the Timer. ‘Fmd what this is all about,’ ^Valsh
directed.

McGuire went to work ‘The ad was placed by a woman
named Tiliie Majczek,’ he reported shortly. ‘Her son, Joe, was
convicted of killing this copper 1 1 years ago. He’s serving 99
years in Joliet prison.’

‘Find out where the woman got the five grand,’ 'Walsh said.
‘Maybe there’s a feature story m it ’

There was. In a few weeks it had all Chicago talking.

’ISTien reporter McGuire went to sec Tillie that October
afternoon he found her in the kitchen of her drab httlc house in
the smok)*, raucous district behind the Chicago stockyards ‘I’m
firom the Times’ McGuire said. ‘I came about your ad '

Before him stood a short woman, spare and muscular, streaks
of white were beginning to make chalk marks on her black hair.
Age accentuated her high Slavic cheekbones, and her shoulders
were stooped, obviously from hard work

F^TSi pullxaJteS *n ReaStT^s Digest* m l&tS

265

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‘Sit,’ she bade McGuire, and then sat doivn across the
kitchen table from him, speaking slowly as she searched for the
English words.

‘Joe good boy,’ she said. ‘Joe don’t kill nobody.’

Did she have any proof? McGuire asked. No, she said, only
the same proof which the jury had refused to believe in the
trial. That was why she had advertised - to find out who
murdered Patrolman Lundy, and thus prove that her Joe could
not have been guilty. She was ready to pay $5,000 for the
truth.

‘How did you raise the money?’ McGuire asked.

‘I scrub floors,’ TiUie answered. ‘In office building down town,
at night. For 1 1 years. Ever since my boy Joe is gone.’

Tilhe’s husband worked in the stockyards, she said. He was
often laid off, and she knew she could not depend on his pay
envelope to purchase the truth that would set Joe free. So she
took the only kind of job she could get. She worked eight hours
a night, six nights a week, on her hands and knees, scrubbing
floors in an office bmlding Eleven years she had scrubbed-
3,500 weary nights. Acres of marble floor, oceans of soapy
water, years of backache and heartache Yet her courage had
never wavered. It took a lot of scrubbing for Tillie to make
enough to save $5,000, but now she had the money.

‘Has anybody answered the ad?’ McGuire asked.

Tilhe shook her head. She said she had tried before, with
$3,500, and no one had answered that ad, either. Justice, she
was discovering could be an expensive luxury.

Back in his office, McGuire told Walsh what he had learned.
It would make a mce feature for the paper, \Valsh agreed. But
the story wasn’t complete.

‘Any chance the kid really wasn’t guilty?’ he asked.

McGuire said : ‘That’s what I’m wondering. The old lady is
sure he’s innocent.’

‘Better check up on that angle, too,’ "Walsh decided. ‘If the
kid’s had a raw deal, let’s set him free.’

For ten and a half months McGuire and another Times
reporter. Jack McPhaul, dug up hidden evidence, scoured the
to%vn and the nation for witnesses to this long-forgotten crime.
They had to overcome the shck manoeuvrings of shabby
politicians who did not want the case revived.

TILLIE SCRUBBED ON 267

Meanwhile, Tilhe scrubbed on. Everj’ ■week she put her
earnings in the bank. And w'hile she scrubbed, McGuire and
McPhaul dug for facts and the Tiims printed diem.

The sordid storj' began on the afternoon of 9 December 1932.
The foreign quarter behind the yards was a rash of illegal bars.
One of them on South Ashland Avenue ivas run by a frowsy,
middle-aged blonde named Vera. At 2.45 on that afternoon
Patrolman WTlIiam D. Lundy, just off duty, stepped into the
ilheit bar-room and ordered a drink. Vera served him. There
was one other customer in the dmgy back room Lundy and the
customer talked about Vera’s foolish habit of keeping several
thousand dollars concealed in her ice-box. The whole neigh-
bourhood knew the money was there. Some day . . .

At that moment tivo tall men stepped into the room with
guns in their hands. They were startled to find a poheeman
there. Lundy had his overcoat on, and his pistol was hard to get
at. As he reached for it the men shot him and fled, leavmg him
dying.

This was the year before the opening of the Chicago 'World’s
Fair, and Mayor Anton Cermak, distressed at his at/s shabby
reputation, ordered a clean-up. There was hue and cry back
of the yards that afternoon. Detectives swarmed through the
streets, questioned informers hunted dovra known gunmen,
belaboured all witnesses.

On that day Tdlie Majezek’s son, Joe, a machinist’s helper,
was at his home, a mile from Vera s bar. He had not gone to
w'ork because his i\dfe, Helen, was about to have a baby. First
he did the housework for her; then some coal which he had
ordered arrived at 2.30, and at 2 45 he was still shoielhng it
into his cellar. Three neighbours testified to this at the trial.

But Joe and his wife had made one mistake They knew
nothing about the murder and the frantic police search, so
when an old acquaintance knocked on their door that night and
said he was ‘in trouble’, they let him spend the night in their
home. What’s more, they told neighbours that the man had
been there - and some neighbour told the police.

Joe did not answer the descnption of cither of the gunmen,
he was too small, too shght Two men who had seen the fleeing
murderers said positively that he ivas not one of them. Vera also
stated that Joe was not involved; but later, after a private talk

268 reader’s digest omnibus

/

%vith the pohce, she changed her story and said Joe was one of
the killers. She, alone, identified him in court.

The judge who heard the case was not satisfied; he called
each of the witnesses back and questioned them. McGuire
found out that after Joe’s conviction the judge had told his
family he was convinced that a grave injustice had been done.
He had worried about it and had planned to try to right the
wong, but died before he had opportunity to reopen the case.
So Chicago forgot Joe.

Joe’s wife used to take their baby to see him in prison and
Tdhe would go along. Tillie tried to cheer Joe up; she told him
that as soon as she had earned enough money everything would
come out all right. Joe was working hard at his prison tasks, and
was learmng book-keeping and shorthand.

One day, after five years, Joe’s wife came to see hun alone.
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘I know you are innocent, but you’ll never get
out of here. And our child needs a father m the home. A man
has asked me to marry him and I’m going to get a divorce.’

That didn’t seem right to TiUie. Joe had so much to worry
about without Helen making hfe so much harder for him
But Tillie didn’t say anything. She just kept on scrubbing.

The Times reporters pored over the court records. They
checked the characters of all the witnesses. They found public
documents which they beheved the police and the state’s
attorney’s office were trying to conceal. They traced the
members of the jury which had convicted Joe, and from four of
them got sworn statements that they would not have convicted
him if the newly uncovered evidence had been presented at the
trial. Joe’s old neighbours, still resentful that their honest
testimony had been brushed aside by a trial prosecutor avid for
a conviction, were anxious to tell again the truth as they knew it

The Times employed Leonarde Keeler, inventor of the he
detector, to take Ins scientific gadgets to the prison and test Joe.
‘The man is telhng the truth,’ Keeler reported.

Then the Times engaged a lawyer who marshalled all the
facts dug out so arduously by the reporters. These facts were so
convincing that the state pardon board made a top-to-bottom
investigation, then recommended to the governor that Joe be
immediately released.

On 15 August 1945 Joe Majczek walked out of the Johet

EPIC OF THE ARCTIC 269

prison gate. Tillie, waiting in the shadow of the tall stone wall,
threw her arms around her son. She didn’t •v\ecp Joe w-as free,
\\’asn’t he?

Jim McGuire took Tillie and Joe to Chicago in a car. Tlicrc
was a little family party that evemng in the Majezek kitchen.
Tilhe had prepared all the things Joe liked best. He sat at the
head of the table and she stood beside him, pihng his plate
high. Everj'thmg was all right now - her boy was free once
more

The Times refused TiUie’s offer of the $5,000, and she is
keeping it for Joe. He may need it some dav, she says Right
now, Joe doesn’t need if he has a fine job as secretary' to a
manufacturer, and is making a new life for himself.

That IS enough for Tilhe, who has no idea that her long years
of indomitable faith and drudgery are an epic of silent, shining
courage

mi

EPIC OF THE ARCTIC

Condensed from True

RUTH AND EDWARD BRECHER

Christmas 1881: Twenty-three young soldiers, their faces
aglow underwell-trimmedbeardSjSatdow’natarough plank table
burdened with mock turtle soup, salmon, fneasseed guillemot,
spiced musk-ox tongue, crab salad, eider ducks, assorted \ ege-
tables, plum pudding with wine sauce, ice cream, fruits, nuts,
candies and coffee. Afterwards there were carols and good cheer,
though outdoors the thermometer registered 43 degrees below
zero. They were as far north as men had ever wintered - less
than 600 miles from the Pole

Fivemonths before, the scholarly, audacious young Lieutenant
Adolphus ^\*ashington Greely had brought this picked Army
detachment by ship to Lady' Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island,
25 miles across the Robeson Channel from Greenland. IVeathcr-
reporting w’as the primary' purpose of the expedition. Grcely’s

in Hesin’ji Difesf w 1946

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270

hourly observation^ of wind, tide, temperature, pressure, mag-
netism and gravity later gave the first coherent picture of polar
weather and its crucial role in determimng the weather of the
temperate zone - and laid the foundations of Arctic meteorology
which was so important during World VV^ar II.

- Plans called for a supply vessel to bring the expedition food
and news in the summer of 1882, and for a rehef ship to carry it
home in the summer of 1883.

The 1882 vessel did not come, but the men were not dis-
heartened. In good health and high spirits, they sledged more
than 3,000 miles on scientific missions. One party crossed the
frozen straits to Greenland, and reached the farthest north that
man had ever penetrated. Another group discovered Hazen
Valley, an Arctic Shangri-La lush with grass and embroidered
with gay yellow poppies, where butterflies fluttered, musk-oxen
grazed peacefully, and long-tailed ducks splashed in limpid
waters. The expedition established the basic concept of the
‘Friendly Arctic’ - a region in vrhich men can live in comfort
if they know how.

A second year passed, and still no ship reached Lady Franklin
Bay. Greely was under orders, in such a contingency, to retreat
southwards some 260 miles to Gape Sabine, where the rehef
vessel would await him. And should ice force the ship south
before a rendezvous, it would leave him comfortable winter
quarters and another year’s supplies.

So on 9 August 1883, the 23 Americans and two Eskimos
headed south in the 27-foot steam launch Lady Greely, with three
oversized rowboats in tow. Their route to the cape was down
the narrow sound separating Greenland from the great islands
that he north of the Amencan continent.

In 1881 the channel had been open and good sailing, in 1882
frozen and good sledging. Now it was neither; ice floes and
Arctic slush were churned by wind and current. For 30 days
the Lady Greely alternately threaded and butted her way through
the shifting ice. Often she was all but crushed between great
floebergs. Once her path was entirely barred by a huge paleo-
crystic floe which soared 50 feet above the surface and extended
many more below. Then, miraculously, like the Bibhcal parting
of the waters, the mammoth bamer cracked and Greely’s string
of cockleshells passed through unscathed. But on 9 September,

EPIC OF THE ARCTIC 271

its goal just visible in the distance, the launch reached dead end
in impenetrable ice.

Ever resourceful, the men made sledges from the launch’s
seats, shod them %vith iron hoops firom her boilers, and lashed
the frame wdth sealskin thongs Loadmg supplies scientific
instruments and two small boats on the sledges, the little band
set out across the treacherous ice pack towards Cape Sabine.
They hauled their three-ton load southwards about a mile a
day.

‘To our dismay,’ Greely recorded on 14 September, ‘we
found that there was a marked movement of the ice pack, which
drove us farther north in three hours than we had travelled
south in as many days.’ Later a huge floe which they had taken
da^'s to cross w'as rotated so that the w'hole weary' way already
tortuously sledged still lay ahead.

Now a storm arose, the wind changed and blew a 50-mile
gale. The ice pack moved rapidly south and great cracks
appeared. Unless the struggling men could reach shore before
they drifted into the open w'aters of Baffin Bay, their frozen
perch would dismtegratc. Every unnecessary pound of gear was
cast off. Greely ivrote in his diary: ‘We have done our utmost,
and must now rely on Prosadence *

Providence, in the form of an immense floeberg, now' loomed
out of the fog between their floe and land. If they could
transfer to it, a route to shore would be open. The berg came
wnthm 50 feet; slush and loose rubble ice prevented a nearer
approach.

‘The shghtest movement of either floe,’ Grccly’s diary' records,
‘would open up the rubble so that the sea would swallow up
anyone on it. But it offered the only possible means of escape
One boat, a sledge and pro\'isions w ere rushed across the ch.asm.
Even as the last man passed over, the floes moved, and one man
just escaped droppmg through ’

Tw’O days later the expedition, exhausted by cold and hunger,
reached land near Cape Sabine. They expected to find friends,
leaping fires, food and clothing. Instead there w as only a letter
of ominous portent- The relief part)' had left for home two
months before, caching a few' garments and a token supply of
food.

Ignorance, incompetence and bad luck conspired to betray

reader’s digest omnibus

272

the Greely expedition. A supply ship sent north in 1882 en-
countered ice near Cape Sabine. The commander, in puppet-like
compliance %vith idiotic orders, cached only ten days’ food for
Greely and earned home the remaining eight tons of provisions.

In 1883 the rehef ship Proteus^ escorted by the naval tender
Yantic, was mpped in the ice near Cape Sabinfe and sank. Her
men left less than a month’s supphes for Greely. The commander
of the Tantic picked up the men, then turned and fled. ‘He
knew,’ wrote Greely, ‘that 25 of his countrymen counted on
relief that year, but Hs orders did not require him to assist them;
his ship went south still freighted with abundant stores.’

In "Washington a cabinet member was quoted as saying he
saw no need to send good money after bad in another attempt
to rescue 25 dead men. But through the efforts of Greely’s wife
a nation-wide newspaper campaign was launched to force
ofiicial action. On 22 January 1884, the House passed a resolu-
tion authorising another relief expedition. But through a
technicality the Bill was not presented to the Senate in proper
form. ‘I hope that if Greely and his men are left to perish,’ one
Senator remarked, ‘they ivill die in a parliamentary maimer.’
Not until 24 April 1884, did rehef ships leave for Cape Sabme.

Christmas 1883 ' Twenty-five gaunt, hungry men lay huddled
in darkness, cold and squalor. Their crude stone hut at Cape
Sabine was barely large enough to let them lie outstretched, and
so low that when sitting upright in their frozen sleeping bags
they scraped their heads against the ice-encrusted roof. The
Arctic sun, long since set, would not rise again for many weeks.
Even on starvation rations their food could hardly last until the
end of March.

In one comer lay Corporal Joseph Elison, even worse oflf than
the rest. He and three others had volunteered to seek a cache of
beef 35 miles to the south. The cache was found, but Ehson’s
limbs were frozen stiff. He pleaded with his mates to leave him;
instead they left the meat and carried him back to camp. Now
nature had amputated his hands and feet. ‘He begged piteously
for death the first week,’ Greely •wrote, ‘but within a month was
a bright and cheery member of our party.’

By the flickering hght of a blubber lamp, Greely read aloud
from the Bible and Ptckunck Papers. ‘Some begrudge the oil for
this purpose,’ his diary notes, ‘but I look on it as more than well

EPIC OF THE ARCTIC 273

spent in giving food for our minds which, turned imsard these
conung months, would ine\ntably drive us all insane.’

Jemmy 18, 1884: Cross lay dead ofstanation, the first of the
band to go. The body was sewn in coffee sacks and iixappcd in
an American flag. Greely read the bunal sendee, and the men
laid their comrade in the ice at a place soon to be known as
Cemetery Ridge

On 2 February, Sergeant George Rice and the Eskimo
Jens Edward set out across the ice pack to Greenland to seek
help from the Etah Eskimos. Four da^'s later they returned
exhausted and m despair, the straits could not be crossed

To coimteract the men’s disappointment, Greely increased
the daily allotment of bread by half an ounce. Tt is all a pitiful
game of brag,’ his diary admits, ‘and I shall have to reduce
everything this coming week ’

Oil could no longer be spared for reading, so Greely lectured
m the darkness on the history and geography of the United
States. He insisted on Army routmes of early nsing, imtten
orders and reports, and so on, knowng that health and morale
depended on just such measures Mostly the talk was of food

March 26: The sun was at last high enough to shine through
a hole cut in the roof of the hut. ‘Tlie first ra^’s,’ wrote Greely,
‘disclosed a scene of utter squalor and misery. For a moment the
ennui and pain, the cold and hunger, the ph^’sical weakness and
mental irritation which had come, the heartsickness resulting
from blasted hopes, and impotent rage at our helplessness rose
up before me But instantly came other thoughts, of the patient
courage, the endunng fortitude, the unwavering loyalt)*, the
great self-denial that each man had shown through endless
months I shall ever think better of mzmkind for this ordeal.’

April 6* Game could not be had. The men ivcre eating
sand fleas - euphemistically called ‘shrimp’ - so small that 700
W'eighed only an ounce. Sergeant Rice and Julius Frederick
started on a second try for the cache of beef. They searched for
days in vain, then Rice began to freeze. Fredcnck stripped off
his owm outer garments in a futile attempt to warm his dv-ing
friend, he held him in his arms till life was gone, then kissed his
brow’, and struggled back across the ice alone. In an almost
unparalleled example of the triumph of the human will, he
added Rice’s uneaten ration to the common store.

274 reader’s digest omnibus

Apnl 9: Lieutenant Lockwood died of starvation. He had
continued to record temperatures until two days before his
death.

May 26: Greely -wrote in his diary of Sergeant Edward Israel,
the expedition’s astronomer: ‘Israel is now exceedingly weak,
unable even to sit up. He talks much of his home and younger
days. I gave him a spoonful of rum this morning. It was perhaps
not fair to the rest, as it was evident it could not benefit him.
However it was a great comfort and relief to him, and I did by
him as I would hke to be done by in such a tune.’

In the end, the terrible ordeal proved too much for Private
Charles Henry. He stole food from the starving party and in
consequence was by far the strongest. There was real danger
that he might kill the others to save the remaining food for
himself, or in order to eat their flesh. As a last desperate measure,
concurred in by all, Greely ordered his execution. He was shot
on 6 June.

Near the camp stood the old sledge made from the Lady
Greely. Its sealskin thongs were now unlashed and eaten. Some
preferred the sealskin boiled, others roasted it over the last bits
of wood cut in matchstick lengths to insure complete combus-
tion. The men consumed their boots and gloves. Later Greely
issued his sealskin jumper, and the oil-tanned covermg of his
sleepmg bag, to be eaten share and share alike by all the
men.

Sergeant Da-vid L. Brainard describes an amazing precaution
taken on 19 June. A spoon %vas tied to the stump of Elison’s
arm, so that if he should survive the others he would have a way
to convey to his mouth whatever was left.

The scientific purposes of the expedition were still meti-
culously served. The barometer had been broken - ‘a great
misfortune,’ \vrote Greely, ‘as I had hoped to continue the
observations until the last man died.’ But wmd and temperature
were still recorded. Brainard, on foraging expeditions for shreds
of moss to eat, brought back Eskimo rehes as well for his
archzeological collection Long found 12 unusual specimens of
shellfish; and though the men were so hungry they ate cater-
pillars when they could find them, the tempting molluscs were
preserved in part of the last pint of alcohol for fiiither zoological
study.

EPIC OF THE ARCTIC 275

June 20 ‘Six years ago today I married,’ Grcclv >\TOtc, ‘and
three years ago I left my for this expcdiuon. "When wll tins

hfe in death end?’

June 22* Wind and dnving snow besieged StarvTition Camp
The se\en survivors composed themsches, each in his o%Nn \say,
for death. Greely opened his Book of Common Prater and read
‘Prayers for the D^dng’. Then he took up his diaiy once more.
‘Buchanan Strait is open this noon a long way up the coast,’ he
•svrote - and there his diary ends

Towards midnight he thought he heard, above the howling
of the gale, the long, low blast of a ship’s whistle Minutes
endured like ages, and then he heard strange voices - the first
in three Arctic years Unlike its predecessors, the 1884 relief
party, led by Commander Winfield Scott Schley, had the judg-
ment and guts vvluch the North demands Pushing ahead through
fog and ice they arrived at the elcv'enth hour.

Ehson, helpless, was sucking the spoon that had been strapped
to his handless arm. Maurice Connell lay crumpled, to all
appearance dead. Brainard drew himself up in a brav c attempt to
sdute Only Frederick and Long were able to walk Bicdcrbeck,
long the party’s nurse, continued his ministrations, dragging
himself on hands and loiees, he forced the last two spoonfuls of
brandy down the throat of the unconscious Connell.

‘Greely, is this you?’

As from a distance Greely heard the words, ^^■lth fumbling
fingers he adjusted his eyeglasses over fast dimming eyes

^es,’ he said, and then in a voice that struggled not to w av cr,
‘I am so glad to see you.’

Ehson died on the voyage home. He had been without feet
or hands for more than six months Though not infected, the
wounds had failed to heal. .'Vt first it was thought that Greely
too would not survive. But by the tunc Mrs Greely was brought
aboard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, care and food and
vvarmth had set all six survivors on the road to health.

Greely lived another half century, admimstcnng the IVeaihcr
Bureau and the Signal Corps and rising to the rank of major-
general in 1906 On his 91st birthday - in March 1935, the 7 car
of his death - he was awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honour for his long hfe of servrice

TRANSACTION IN TAHITI

Condensed from The Atlantic Monthly
JAMES NORMAN HALL

Some years ago while living at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, I
found myself so low in funds that I retired to a one-room house
on two acres about 35 imles from town, which I was able to
rent for $3 a month. The land was so fertile that I decided to
make a vegetable garden.

The experience was disillusioning. Millions of tiny red ants
earned away most of my seed and land crabs ate the few things
that did grow. After three months all I had to show for my toil
was two cobs of sweet com from which rats had eaten the kernels,
three small tomatoes, and one marrow. Adding my time at 20
cents an hour to the expenditure for tools and for seed which I
had imported from Amenca, I found that these vegetables cost
$15*50 each. Nevertheless I resolved to try once more, and
obtained from the States a small quantity of new seed.

But when I cleared away the weeds preparatory to planting,
and saw the battalions of waiting ants and land crabs, I lost
heart. T’d better go back to writing,’ I thought. That afternoon
I was cleamng my rusty typewriter when a Chinaman named
Hop Sing, who lived nearby, drove pzist in his dilapidated
spring-wagon. I knew that he had a garden in which he raised
sweet potatoes, water-melons and field com, so I hailed him and
gave him my seed. 1 explained what each packet contained -

Ftra puthshed tn ‘The Readet’s DtgesP in IWO

276

TRANSACTION IN TAHITI 277

lettuce, beans, marrow, tomatoes. Golden Bantam com He
grunted and said, ‘How much?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘A present for you.’ He grasped the seat
of the wagon to steady himself and his black eyes glittered, but
he displayed no other evidence of emotion.

I forgot Hop Smg forthinth, being engrossed in the problem
of how to hve on my capital of 128 francs - about $5 — until I
could uTite and sell an article or story. Even though a manu-
script sent to America were accepted at once, I couldn’t hope
to receive a cheque for three months.

My rent was paid for three months in advance, but what
about food'^ To live three months on 128 francs was impossible,
so I decided not to try; I spent 25 francs for native tobacco (if
I was to uTite I would have to smoke) and invested most of the
remainder m sweet potatoes and tmned beef \\Tien this food
was gone - well. I’d uony' about that uhen the time came

Three da^’s later I was strolling vamly to write an article
on my recent expencnces in the South Seas uhen I was aroused
from my mood of profound dejection by a knock at the door.
It was Hop Sing From his wagon he brought m three water-
melons, a bottle of ivine, a basket of eggs, and a hen.

‘Littly plesent, you,’ he said, and quickly drove off.

His generous gift was a life-saver. My tinned beef and sweet
potatoes were nourishing, but by now I could hardly endure the
sight of them. At once I planned a chicken dinner, but on
second thought I tied the hen to a stake m the yard, found some
coconuts partly eaten by rats, and fed her. After dining on a
six-egg omelette I went back to my writing with entliusiasm, and
in a feiv hours had finished my article.

The monthly steamer from New Zealand to the States ivas
due at Papeete early next morning and I determined to put my
manuscript on that ship mysdf. To save money, I decided to
walk into towm. Fortified ivith another six-egg omelette and a
glass of the wne, I set out.

It was brilhant moonlight, and as I follow’ed the winding
road the silvery smoke of waterfalls festooned lofty precipices,
and on the coral reef great combers broke in hnes of white fire.
From native houses came snatches of French and Tahidan songs
accompanied by guitars and accordions. Tow’ards midnight I
found m>-self agam thinking of food. As I was passing a thatched

k

reader’s digest omnibus

278

hut, an old native offered me some of the food he and his wfe
were roasting m the coals of their dnftwood fire. The dish was
delicious. To my amazement the old man said it was made of
land crabs - the very pests that had aided in ruining my garden
- and mape nuts - which were abundant on my place. I hadn’t
known that they were good to eat. He showed me how to catch
crabs with a fishpole and line baited ^vlth hibiscus leaves

I reached Papeete at daivn, just as the steamer entered the
harbour. At the post ofiice I mailed my precious parcel with a
silent prayer, then breakfasted frugally. I was strolling along the
colonial waterfiront when a bald, fat httle Chinaman came
running after me.

‘You know Hop Sing?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Hop Sing live close me.’

‘Hop Sing brudda-law me. He send me letta; say you give
seed, make garden. My name Lee Fat - keep store there,’ and
he pointed down the street. ‘^Vhen you go home^’

‘Go this morning on bus.’

‘Goo-bye,’ he said, and rushed away. WTule waiting for the
bus I sat on the Beachcombers’ Bench, usually occupied on
steamer day by strays from aU parts of the world, waiting for
letters containing money — which almost never came. ‘Three
months hence,’ I thought, ‘I’ll be sitting here nursing the same
forlorn hope.’ "Well, I’d have nine francs left after paymg my
bus fare; ^vlth the land crabs and mape nuts I shouldn’t starve,
and meanwhile I’d work hard at my wnting.

When I got off the bus at home the driver handed me a box.
‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I told him, ‘that’s not mine.’ He
explained that a Chinaman had paid for its transportation to
my place. Prying off the lid I found a pencilled card: ‘Mr Hall,
for you. Lee Fat.’ In the box were tivo pounds of chocolates,
some lichee nuts, a quart of champagne, two silk handkerchiefs
and a pair of silk pyjamas.

I lowered the champagne into my cistern to keep it cool,
then went to attend to my chicken. She had worked herself
loose, and after a search I fbund her under the back steps,
where she had laid an egg and was sittmg on it. This egg was
unfertilised so I took it out, made her a nest of excelsior, and
put in it the remaining five eggs of Hop Sing’s gift. The hen
settled. down on them ivith contented duckings.

TRANSACTION IN TAHITI

279

I thrived upon the crabs and mape nuts. Owing to worrv
and my diet of tinned beef and sweet potatoes, I had been

but -within six weeks I gained 14 pounds. Meanwhile my
hen hatched five chicks In my absorption in crab and chicken
farmmg, and m my wTitmg, I had forgotten the champagne,
but one day when my landlord and se\eral of his children
• dropped in, I shared the bottle with him and gave Lee Fat’s

chocolates to the children The next morning I found on m>
verandah a bunch of bananas and a sack of oranges and
mangoes Thereafter I w'as never without fruit or fish from mv
landlord and his wife I w-as ov'erw helmed with benefits and
remembered v\ith deep gratitude that I owed them all to Hop
Sing.

His garden was now flourishing, and gave promise of a
bountiful han est under his patient care. Hop Sing vias a baker
as w’cll as a gardener, and four times a week he left at my gate a
ensp loaf or a pineapple tart. Nothing I could do or say dried
up his fountain of gratitude for my httle gift of seed.

The third incommg steamer since the posting of my manu-
script vias due almost before I reahsed it. Once more I walked
into town and waited on the Beachcombers’ Bench for the
distribution of the mail. Finally, summoning all my resolution,
I vient to the delivery vrindow. At first the girl said there was
nothing for me But as I was going, she asked my name again.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there’s one letter Fifty centimes due.’

kMien I paid this I had only a 25-centimc piece left, the
smallest com in French Oceania. But the letter contained a note
accepting my manusenpt and a cheque for $500!

To me this was a fortime. It would pay all my hving expenses
for several ^ears. On the other hand, it would enable me to
leave Tahiti, and I knew that if I didn’t go now I might never
again have enough money for a steamship ticket. I v\’alked the
streets in an agon> of mdeasion. At last, as the toivn clock was
striking two, the decision was made. I vTOuld go.

On the day of my departure Hop Sing and Lee Fat came to
sec me off. Hop Sing’s partmg gift was a basket of big tomatoes
and a dozen ears of Golden Bantam - fruits of the seeds I had
giien him. The two Chinamen smiled goodb>es as the steamer
backed away from the v%harf.

I asked the cabin steward to have the com prepared and

28 o

reader’s digest omnibus

served for my luncheon. My only companion at the table was a
tall, spare man with a drooping white moustache and bilious
complexion. He sat down without even a nod. From his dour
expression as he looked over the menu card I judged him hard
to please in the matter of food. When the steaming sweet com
was brought in he looked at it in astomshment, pushed the rest
of his lunch aside, and helped himself. After finishing his third
ear he said, ‘Steward, where does this corn come from? It’s not
on the menu.’

‘It’s a gift from the gentleman opposite you.’

He gave me a quick glance as though he had just then become
aware of my presence. ‘Consider yourself thanked, sir,’ he said
to me brusquely. WTien I left the table he was still eating corn.
On deck half an hour later, watching the mountains of Tahiti
disappear below the horizon, I saw my luncheon companion
approach.

‘Young man, that was delicious,’ he said. ‘I ate six ears! You
see, I have dyspepsia and sweet com is one of the few things I
can eat without suffering afterwards. Now then, tell me about
your island. I didn’t go ashore. Useless to try to see a place in
six hours.’

I told him of the beauty of the island and of the native life,
and at length cut off short, thinking he might be bored.

‘Not at all,’ he insisted. ‘You’ve had an interesting time,
evidently, and you’ve made good use of your eyes and ears.
Ever try your hand at ^vriti^g?’

I explained that wnting was my trade, and when he asked to
see some of my stuff I brought him six short manuscripts. He
settled down in his deck chair. I left him for an hour or so, and
when I returned he said, ‘These four are not bad. ^Vhat do you
want for them? I forgot to tell you that I’m manager of a
newspaper syndicate in America.’

I was about to ask if $ioo for the four would be too much
when he interrupted me. ‘Give you $150 each for them. That
satisfactory?’ I admitted that it was - quite satisfactory.

That night, looking back on the steady flow of good fortune
that had come my way ever since my modest gift to Hop Smg,
I doubted whether bread cast upon the waters had eve]f brought
anyone so abundant a reward.

And it all came fi-om a dollar’s worth of seed.

IT HAPPENED ON THE SUBWAY

PAUL DEUTSCHMAN

There are two different explanations of ^\hat happened as
the result of a subivay ride ttJten by Hungarian-bom Marcel
Stemberger on the afternoon of lo January' 1948

Some people will say that Stemberger’s sudden impulse to
visit a sick friend — and the bnght is orld of dramatic events that
followed — as part of a string of luckj' coincidences. Others
will see the guiding hand of Dhine Proridence in everj’thmg
that happened that day

But w’hatever the eiqilanation, here are the facts:

Stemberger, a portrait photographer, has followed for years
an unchanging routine in going from his suburban home to his
office in New York. A methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy
white hair, guileless brown eyes and the bouncing enthusiasm
of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary, Stemberger takes the
g.09 train to the city each morning.

On the morning of 10 January, he boarded the 9.09 as usual.
En route he suddeffiy decided to Nisit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian
friend who lived in Brookljm and who ivas ill.

T don’t know' why I decided to go to see him that morning,’
Stemberger told me some w'eeks afterwards. ‘I could have done
it after office hours. But I kept thinking that he could stand a
little cheering up ’

Accordmgly, at the next stop Stemberger changed to the
subway for Brookljn, went to his friend’s house and stayed until
mid-aftemoon He then boarded a subway for his office in
mid-town New’ York.

‘The car w’as crowded,’ Stemberger told me, ‘and there
seemed to be no chance of a scat. But just as I entered, a man
sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave and I slipped
into the empty place.

*I’ie been liring in New York long enough not to be in the
habit of starting conversations with strangers. But, being a
photographer, I have the pecuhar habit of analysing people’s

Fitg tn •TUlRair't Otfaf tn 1949

281

282 reader’s digest omnibus

faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my
left. He was probably in his late 30’s and his eyes seemed to
have a hurt expression in them He was reading a Hunganan-
language newspaper and something prompted me to turn to
him and say m Htmgarian, “I hope you don’t mind if I glance
at your paper.”

‘The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native
language but he answered politely, “You may read it now. I’ll
have time later on.”

‘During the half-hour nde to town we had quite a conver-
sation. He said his name was Paskin. A law student in Hungary
when the war started, he had been put into a labour battalion
and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians
and put to work burying the German dead. After the war he
had covered hundreds of miles on foot, until he reached his
home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.

‘I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it
for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. "WTien he
went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother,
brothers and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he
went upstairs to the apartment he and his wife had once had.
It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard
of his family.

‘As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him,
calling : Paskin bacsi' Paskin basaP’ThaX means “Uncle Paskm”.
The child was the son of some old neighbours of his. He went to
the boy’s home and talked to his parents. “Your whole family is
dead,” they told him “The Nazis took them and your wife to
Auschwitz.”

‘Auschivitz was one of the worst concentration camps. Paskin
thought of the Nazi gas chambers, and gave up all hope. A few
days later, too heartsick to remain longer in Hungary, which
to him was a funeral land, he set out again on foot, stealing
across border after border until he reached Paris. He had
managed to emigrate to the United States in October 1947,
just three months before I met him.

‘All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that
somehow his story seemed familiar. Suddenly I knew why. A
young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends
had also been from Debrecen j she had been sent to Auschwitz;

IT HAPPENED ON THE SUBWAY 283

from there she had been transferred to work in a German
munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed m the gas
chambers Later, she was liberated and was taken to America
in the first boatload of Displaced Persons in 1946 Her story had
moved me so much that I had written down her address and
phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and
thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her present life.

‘It seemed impossible that there could be any connection
betivccn these two people, but when I reached my station I
stayed on the train and asked in what I hoped was a casual
voice, “Is your first name Bela^”

‘He turned pale “Yes*” he answered. “How did you know?”

*I fumbled anxiously in my address book. “Was your wfe’s
name Marya**”

‘He looked as if he were about to faint. “Yes* Yes*” he said-

‘I said, “Let’s get off the train ” I took him by the arm at the
next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like
a man in a trance while I searched for the number in my address
book It seemed hours before I had the woman called Marya
Paskin on the other end. (Later, I learned her room was
alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never
answenng it because she had so few fnends and the calls were
always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one
else at home and, after letting it ring for quite a while, she
answered it.)

*l\Tien I heard her voice, at last, I told her who I was and
asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the
question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where
she had lived in Debrecen and she told me the address.

‘Asking her to hold the wire, I turned to Paskin and said,
“Did you and your ivife live on such-and-such a street**”

‘ “Yes!” Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet, and
trembling.

‘ “Try to be calm,” I ui^ed him. “Something miraculous is
about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to
your wife*”

‘He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright
ivith tears He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife’s
voice, then suddenly cried, “This is Bela* This is Bela*” and
began to mumble hystencally. Seeing that the poor fellow was

284 reader’s digest omnibus

so excited he couldn’t talk coherently, I took the receiver from
his shaking hands.

‘I began talking to Marya, who also sounded hystencah
“Stay where you are,” I told her. “I am sending your husband
to you. He ^vill be there in a few minutes.”

‘Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again,
“It is my ^vife, I go to my wofe!”

‘At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin lest the
man should faint from excitement, but decided that this was a
moment in which no stranger should intrude. Putting Paskin
into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya’s
address, paid the fare and said goodbye.’

Bela Paskin’s reunion ivith his wfe was a moment so poignant,
so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterwards
neither he nor Marya could recall anything about it.

‘I remember only that when I left the phone I walked to the
mirror like in a dream to see maybe if my hair had turned
grey,’ she said later. ‘The next thing I know a taxi stops in fi’ont
of the house and it is my husband who comes towards me
Details I cannot remember; only this I know - that I was happy
for the first time in many years.

‘Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have
both suffered so much, I have almost lost the capability to be
not afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house I say to
myself, “Will an^'thing happen to take him from me again?” ’

Her husband is confident that no overwhelming misfortune
will ever again befall them. ‘Providence has brought us together,’
he says simply. ‘It was meant to be.’

Sceptical persons would no doubt attribute the events of that
memorable afternoon to mere chance.

But was it chance that made Stemberger suddenly decide to
visit his sick friend, and hence take a subway line that he had
never been on before^ Was it chance that caused the man
sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Stemberger
came m^ Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting
beside Stemberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper?

Was it chance - or did God ride the Brooklyn subway that
afternoon^

BLUE RIVER IN THE SEA

Condensed from Frontiers' A Magazine of Natural History
A. H. Z. CARR

After the tragic crash of the New York-Bermuda flying boat
Cavalier on a freezing January day, one of those rescued after
floating in the ocean for ten terrible hours exclaimed, ‘If it had
not been for the ivTirm water wc would all have perished.’
Luckily for those who hved, the plane had come down where
that miracle of nature, the Gulf Stream, runs like a balmy blue
nver across the cold green Atlantic.

Two million tons of coal burned every minute would not
equal the beat which the Gulf Stream transfers in its Atlantic
crossing IVithout the Stream’s ever-renewed ^t of tropical
warmth, England’s lush green landscape would be as stark and
inhospitable as that of Labrador, which is no farther north. Her
ports would be locked by ice every winter. If the Gulf Stream
w'cre cooled by as httle as 15 degrees, England, Scandinavia,
Northern France and Germany would likely become land for
the Eskimos.

One of earth’s mightiest powers, this Gulf Stream Every
hour, nearly 100 bilhon tons of water pour through the Florida
straits. By comparison, the majestic iCssissippi is a mere dribble;
even the vast discharge of the Amazon is not one five-hunihedth
its volume.

Ask any ship’s officer about the force of this ribbon of blue.
Back in 1513, Ponce de Leon on his voyage to Flonda was
startled to find that in spite of strong favouring winds his ship
w’as actually driven back by the motion of the water. In colomal
days, Bntish authorities, annoyed by the slow time made by thdr
mail packets on the westward Atlantic crossing, took the matter
up with our own Benjamin Frankhn. Dr Frankhn put his
scientific mind to work, talked ivith an expenenced Nantucket
whaler captam and learned enough to chart the stream, giving
It the name it still bears. He informed the British that westbound

Fm’ fnUltsked »n Tht SeaStt’s Dlfesr w J939

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vessels which avoided the Stream would gain at least two weeks
over ships which sailed against it. It was a long while before
the proud sea captains of England deigned to accept his advice,
but today great liners coming from Europe go out of their way
to avoid the drag of the Gulf Stream, whUe gladly accepting its
help on the eastbound journey. South of New York, the Stream
may reduce a ship’s daily run as much as 70 miles.

Franklin, too, hit upon a reasonable explanation of the Gulf
Stream. The trade wmds, blowing west from Africa, pile up
warm tropical waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where their level
is several inches higher than that of the nearby ocean. From
this relentless pressure they must have an outlet, and they find
one in the gap between Florida and Cuba, which is about 90
miles -tvide and 2,000 feet deep. Through this immense drain-
pipe the waters rush northwards and their 5,000-mile journey
to Scandinavia begins.

All of the Stream does not move at the same speed. It is a
three-mile-an-hour express on the middle track, -with slow
freights on either side. From Flonda north, the Stream follows
the curve of the coast but stays well offshore. Two hundred
miles out of New York, your boat may be nosing through a
blustery ^vinter wind, but in the distance a faint haze lies over
a blue sea. Then all at once spring has come. The vivid mdigo
of the great current stands out in sharp contrast to the murky
green of the surrounding ocean. You shed your overcoat as the
temperature of the water changes from 40 degrees to 75, and
all the romantic travel advertisement phrases about the Gulf
Stream seem behevable.

When New York has had a particularly mild -winter, news-
papers sometimes suggest that the Gulf Stream has ‘changed
its course,’ that soon Long Island may be another Florida,
complete with orange groves. Science disagrees. It is probable
that the Gulf Stream has not permanently altered its course
since it has been knoivn Even if it did, the chmate of the
Atlantic States would hardly be improved, for our prevailmg
wmds, which govern temperature, blow from the west. Some
government experts even claim that if the Stream moved closer
to New York, wmters might be more severe, as the cold baro-
metric ‘highs’ from the west would be hkely to huger, held up
by the permanent ‘warm front’ of the Gulf Stream.

BLUE RIVER IN THE SEA 287

Off the Grand Banlss the Stream, now about 300 miles %vide,
meets the icj' Labrador current. This umon of arctic and
southern waters produces the thick fogs for which the region is
famous Shortly ^icr the Titanic disaster, an American engineer
proposed that England and the United States jointly construct
a huge jetty east from Newfoundland, to divert the Labrador
current. Sediment, he claimed, would soon build a peninsula
over such a dam, free the Banks fium fog and icebergs, and let
the unimpeded Gulf Stream give northern Europe a California
climate. Fantastic as the idea sounds, it was supported by
prominent engineers, including Goethals of Panama Canal
fame, and a Bill w as introduced m Congress; but with the World
■W'ar the project died.

Although the Gulf Stream loses some speed and heat at the
Grand Banks, on the whole it offers surprismg resistance to the
cold drift from the north. UTien the Labrador current is strong.
It forces the Stream south for many miles without actually
breaking mto it Even with icebergs at its margm the Stream
retains its character, supporting tropical marine life such as the
colder waters a few’ miles off never produce. Such famihar
denizens of the North Atlantic as whales, while found on both
sides of the Stream, are rarely seen in it.

Neanng Europe, the current spreads north and south The
northern drift dissipates itself m the Arctic Ocean. The southern
drift comes agam mto the path of the hot trade winds, and the
hurrjmg waters start baci. to the hlexican Gulf, gathering
again their store of equatorial heat.

The complete coune of the Stream, therefore, resembles a
tremendous 12,000-railc vvhirlpool. The central waters within
this eddy are relatively still Their chief feature is that strange
‘sea of seaweed’, the Sargasso Sea Legend has called it a
sailors’ death-trap, where becalmed sailmg vessels are caught
fast in Its treacherous slimy growth. Actually the Sargasso is
not dangerous. The derehets occasionally seen among the dead
seaweed have been earned, like the weed itself, into the centre
of the eddy by the currents, and represent tragedies which took
place perhaps thousands of miles away.

It takes three years, saentists think, for the North Atlantic
eddy to make a complete circuit. This estimate is based qn the
courses of bottles - thrown overboard to drift - contaimng

288

reader’s digest omnibus

papers, printed in many languages, requesting the finder to note
the place and date of finding and mail them back. The United
States Hydrographic Office has thousands of these ‘bottle
papers’ on file, and more come in every day.

Every ocean in the world has its own mysterious system of
eddying currents. In the North Pacific, for example, there is the
magnificent Japanese Current which moderates the climate of
Alaska and tihe Pacific Coast. Science is still not satisfied with
what it knows about these currents. Franklm’s idea about
prevailing wmds is popular, but other contributing causes
mclude differences in ocean levels, temperatures, and densities,
and the rotation of the earth.

But for most of us, it is enough that the Gulf Stream and its
counterparts keep on their benevolent and eternal round, aiding
mariners to their ports and tempenng the winds to shivering
mankind.

THE

MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER

I’VE MET

ROBERT FLAHERTY

We encountered her soon after our arrival in the httle town of
Apia, in British Samoa - a stout, homely, barefoot Polynesian
girl of about 23, dressed in a flowered Mother Hubbard. We
saw her everywhere, and after a while we were sure she was
following us. "When we questioned one of the traders he said,
‘Fa^a-Samoa - the way of Samoa — shejust wants to make fhends.’

We had come to make a motion picture of native life in the
South Seas. There were seven of us - my Avife, our three small
children with their Irish nurse Anme, my brother and I. We
had chosen Savii, the westernmost island of the Samoan group,
as the place to make our documentary film , and the tiny village
of Safune was to be our headquarters. For the moment we were
staying in Apia, to obtain official permits and to have a tailor
maJce the light clothing we would need.

First published in "The Reader’s Digesf in 1942

THE MOST unforgettable CHARACTER I’VE MET 289

One day when our children were pla^dng in front of the
bungalow , the Samoan girl watched them until their ball rolled
mto the road This was the excuse she had been ivaitmg for
She picked it up, walked shyly to the children and said: *My
name, it is Fialelei ’

They smiled, she smiled, and from that moment they were
friends. The cliildren brought her to the verandah where we
w ere sitting. ‘Please,’ she said to us, ‘Fa' moli-moh - make smooth
your heart It is only that I am playing with the children.’ Her
voice was beautifully soft. ‘It’s good of you to come,’ we replied.

Ev'er afterwards she was v«th the children. Between whiles she
took care of Annie, who had been stricken by the oppressive
heat. At night she slept on a mat on our verandah, ^\^len Annie
recovered she said Fialelei had been a godsend. The name
Fialelei, v%e discovered, meant ‘she who wishes everyone well’.
It fitted the prl perfectly.

"WTien vse sailed for Savil we said goodbye to Fialelei The
girl kissed the children by pressing her nose against their cheeks.
I tned to pay her for her services but she folded her arms behind
her back. ‘Only to know you has made me v'er’ happy,’ she
said.

Safune has been desenbed as Paradise. So it is - except for
flies. ^Ve screened the bungalow but a few flies alway’s got in.
Nothing the white man can say can convince the natives that
flies are dangerous. "We could not persuade our servants to kill
them. Tabu, they would sav', shaking their heads "WTien an
epidemic of amoebic dysentery struck the village, the flies spread
it and every house soon had at least one victim. We prayed that
our family would be spared

One evening a boat came in. Hoping that it brought medical
help from Apia, we hurried down to the beach ‘No-no
doctor,’ said the native skipper. Then we heard a voice calling
us There was Fialelei.

‘You came all this way' just to see us^’ I asked.

*I am ver’ womed about the sickness,’ she rephed. The girl
had left her home and come to a plague-nddcn village to be
near us — a iamily she had known but two weeks

The epidemic took heavy' toll of hfe. Then Annie was stricken
and there were days when we lost all hope for her. I don’t know
what we would have done if it hadn’t been for Fialelei She

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290

saw that the water was boiled. She examined the fruit and
vegetables, for a break in the skin might mean infection. She
cared for the children. She sat up ivith Annie during the
anxious nights; I don’t know when she slept.

And, tabu or not, she swatted - and made the servants swat -
every fly that got in the house. The local trader exclaimed, ‘In

my years in the islands I have never before seen one of them
kill a fly!’ In time the epidemic died out, Annie got well, the
heat broke and the towering coconut trees began to bow to
south-east trade winds.

We lived as one big family with the people of our village. The
children ran about -with a lava-lava around their middles, red
seed necklaces fashioned by Fialelei around their throats. Fialelei
taught them to dance, sivim and dive, and they soon picked up
from her the beautiful Samoan songs. I determined that when
our motion picture was shown in America music of that sort
should accompany it.

"We had come to make a film but began to fear that we ivould
not succeed. All actors ■were to be natives, and money meant
little to them. In my first picture, Kanook of the North, the drama
was ready-made in the struggle of the Eskimos with snow and
cold and hunger. These Samoans could eat merely by extending
a lazy arm for a banana. How could w'e get them to work for
us? Always we had to contend with the happy-go-lucky habits
of a people unable to grasp the seriousness of our undertaking.
Moreover, we were confronted by island ritual and formality;

THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER I’VE MET 201

chiefs and heads offanuhcs had to be consulted frequently. IVe
Mere m constant danger of\iolating obscure tabus

That Moana of ike South Seas ever reached the screen at all is
due to Fialelei. She had learned Enghsh at a nussion school,
and bemg tlie grand-daughter of a great chief she knew the
intricacies of island etiquette and petty jealousies, and could
deal irith chiefs on equal terms. 'With sj.'mpathetic understand-
ing she became our mterprctcr, acted as diplomatic counsellor
and emissaiy*, expert on nati\ e protocol.

Each mght we held conferences to decide the work for the
following day. Fialelei hstened, sometimes shyly making a sug-
gestion. Often when cveiytlung was ready for the camera she
w ould discover that the heroine had omitted part of her costume.
Angrily she w ould send tlie girl scurrying for the missing article.

'WTien for some reason the local trader, a white man whose
•word had always been law in the islands, became incensed over
our film-making and tried to persuade the natives not to act for
my camera, Fiilelci told the chiefs that of all the islands theirs
had been chosen for this picture, and that the film w'ould be
shown throughout the W'orld and would bring them honour
and glory. The picture-makmg went on.

IMicnever she found time she took the children piggj'i-back
to a lagoon under a cliff from w'hich himg long vines Catching
hold of these she would swing in great loo-foot arcs, then let go
and tumble with a mighty splash into the water. She was grace-
ful in walking and runmng, and in the water she was wonderful.
It w'as a memorable thing to see her sivimming with beautiful
ease, my children hanging on to her wherever they could
Though she had small ankles and wrists, Fialelei w’as immensely
strong. Once she lifted my 14 stone brother as if he were a
kitten.

At last, after two years in Samoa, our picture \vas finished.
The thought of leaving Fialelei behmd never occurred to us.
\NTiiIe w'e waited in Apia for a ship, my wife outfitted the girl
for our northern climate. The hardest problem w-as shoes, for
Fialelei had never w'om them and her feet wxre large.

To her the voyage on the white man’s ship was wonderful.
She learned to play deck tennis with skill. Every day she and
the captam sw’am m the pool on deck, like seals in a tanV On
the morning we reached San Francisco, the aty w'as drowned in

reader’s digest omnibus

292

fog. Beside me I heard a fiightened sob. It was Fialelci - she
had never seen a fog before. In the hotel she simply could not
keep out of the lift. ‘What floor, please?’ the operator would
inquire. ‘No floor, please,’ she would reply. ‘I am just going
up and I am just going down.’

Later we went on to Hollywood and afterwards to New York.
She lived with us in this country a year. She loved candy, ice-
cream sodas and apples. Popping com amused her endlessly.
Before skyscrapers and other mechamcal wonders she was pro-
perly respectful, but it was people who really interested her.
One day when we looked down upon the throngs hurrying
along Fifth Avenue she said, ‘How can so many people pass one
another and not speak?’

Pam m any of us affected her more than pain to herself. One
day my \vife had a sick headache; Fialelei gently massaged her
temples, and as her slim fingers moved she kept her face turned
aside to hide her tears.

A fHend of mine heard that there were some Samoan dancers
at Coney Island. Without forewarmng Fialelei, we took her
there. The moment she heard the music and saw the dancers
she sprang on the stage and m a twinkling was dancing wth the
others. Afterwards they gathered - these Samoans, thousands
of miles from home - crying and laughing, to exchange
experiences.

"Wflien the Department of Imnugration notified us that the
girl must return to Samoa we pleaded ivith the officials, but to
no avail. The children and Annie sobbed unashamedly Fialelei
shook them off at last and, bravely laughing through the tears
that rolled doivn her cheeks, waved goodbye.

‘Everyone on the railroad was kind,’ she wrote us some
months later. ‘And on the ship it was the same. I am going over
to Safune to tell them you are all well. Be ^vritlng please. For all
alone I am now again and all I have is aloafa (love) for you all.’

All this happened 18 years ago. There have been many
letters, but we have never seen her since.

She who wishes everyone well was her name. It was also her way
of life. A friend of ours who had kno%vn her remarked, ‘It was
like having Christ m the house.’

I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE

Condensed from The Baltimore Sunday Sun
HENRI ROCHARD

Henn Rochard is the pen name of a yi-year-old major in the Belgian
Army reserve who was, before the war, a student at Colonial University
in Antwerp. He holds B.S., M.S and Ph.D. degrees from Belgian,
French and German universities. Until the capitulation of Bel-
gium he served as an officer in the anti-aircraft artillery. Thereafter he
joined the Resistance forces He spent five months in German prison
camps.

It all started when I met a U.S. Army nurse.

While scning as a haison officer for the Belgian,Govemment
at the German war* crimes trials, I was accidentally hit by a
car and was taken to a U.S Army hospital There I met
Catherme.

Upon my release from the hospital I obtamed my discharge
fixtm the Bdgian Army and returned to Nuremberg as a cmhan
employee of the U.S \Var Department. Catherme and I became
engaged

Our first problem ^vas to obtam permission fi-om U.S. Army
Headquarters to marry. It’s not like asking a father for his
daughter’s hand and getting an immediate yes or no I had to
type out five copies of my personal history"^ which, together ivith
our formed marriage request, were sent to Headqueirters Two
months later the documents were returned, duly stamped.
‘Henri Rochard, being morally and phy'sically fit, and the
umon not seemmg to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces
of the United States, this marriage is approved.’

We platmed to leave for the Urated States as soon as possible,
so we made inquiries at the nearest U.S. Consulate regarding
conditions of my entry.

Four months later we received a reply. ‘It is probable that
you can be admitted into the United States under the proxisions

F ira ptiiltskti in ‘The Saitr j DittsC in 1947

293

reader’s digest omnibus

294

of Public Law 271, which regulates the entry of War Bndes ’
With that letter my troubles began.

Armed with the letter, I went to my own headquarters and
asked for the necessary Army forms. People there were very
sorry, but there was no mention of male war brides in Army
regulations; my wife would have to procure the forms through
Aer headquarters ‘For this purpose the Army considers you
your wife’s dependent.’

Catherine secured the necessary papers and forwarded them
to Headquarters. Six weeks later this starthng letter amved,
addressed to Mrs HenriRochard (i.e., me), c/o Captain Cathenne
G. Rochard*

Dear Madame, (me again!)

Following application of your husband (thatwas my wife)

you are informed that your application to enter the United

States as a War Bnde has been accepted by this office.

Please fill in attached form.

The form requested full information about my past and also
wanted to know if I was pregnant If so, how many months^

A fortnight later a letter addressed to Mrs Henri Rochard
directed me to report to Breraerhaven, War Brides Division.

When I arrived there, accompanied by my wife, I reported,
as ordered, to the Dependents’ Hotel. The only males in the
hotel, I found, were small babies and full colonels. The officer
in charge, however, checked his mcoming list. 139 War Brides,
126 children of War Bndes, 9 dogs of "War Brides, i War
Husband.

My vanity was not inflated by being hsted after the dogs, but
at least my sex had been restored.

At this point I was told that I must return to Belgium to
obtain a passport. This took two weeks. Upon my return I was
greeted with the information that I needn’t have made the trip
after all, because P.L. 271 provides that no passport or clearance
is required!

The Army now instructed me to go to the Staging Area,
Building II. The sergeant on duty at Building 1 1 said he could
give me neither room nor bed because according to regulations
these quarters were for ‘U.S. Officers’ and, although I was a
reserve officer of an Allied army, I was actually a dependent.

I WAS A MALE WAS. BSIDE

295

He directed me to Building 10, assigned to female dependents.
There the ^VAC sergeant on duty screamed when I entered. I
explained that I was a male sometimes listed as a female be-
cause the Army had no regulations covermg my ctise and the
categor)' m which I fitted best was War Bndes
The WAG decided that I should try Bmlding g. There the
lieutenant in charge laughed at my story and let me have a bed
In the morning when I had located my wife, we walked over
to the dining-room. There I had to sign the war bndes’ sheet,
my wife the officers’ sheet. My wife paid for her meal, but my
money was refused because, as a tvar bnde, I was a guest of the
government.

Finally the long-awaited day of departure came and I was
directed to nde to the dock ivith the other ivar bndes The
merry-go-round was starting again - 1 appeared on the shipping
list as Mrs Henn Rochard' As I climbed the ship’s gangway, a
naval officer grabbed me by the lapel, where a shipping tag
indicated my name (Mrs), fonvarding address, and age. ‘Sony,’
he said, ‘you can’t board this ship. You’re not iralitary personnel.
You’re not a avilian employee You’re not a dependent ’

There was nothing for me to do but turn back At the other
end of the gangivay stood the Army heutenant in charge of war
bndes He sent me back up agam In a moment. Army and
Navy were engaged in hostilities m the middle of the gangivay,
while I served as shock absorber.

Finally the facts of the case were more or less agreed on Mrs
Henri Rochard was a male She (or he) ivas the spouse of a
returmng servicewoman and was entitled to the same nghts and
pnvileges as war bndes As a war bride I was entitled to a bunk
m a first-class stateroom. Because female war bndes m these
quarters nught object, however, it was decided to bunk me with
staff officers

As our ship passed the chffs of Dover, our troubles seemed to
be over. My ivife and I managed to have our meals together,
and nothing more than fire drills broke the tranquilhty.

Then, on the fifth day, the transport surgeon called over the
public address system for all war brides to report to the hospital.
I decided not to report It ivas an error. WTien the last bride had
received her check-up, the PA system started screaming the
name of Mrs Henri Rochard So I reported.

reader's digest omnibus

296

‘Are you the husband of that war bride who didn’t think it
necessary to come dotra?’ the physician greeted me ‘You’d
better tell her to come down — and fast. If she isn’t here in two
minutes, I’ll close the damn place up, and she can explain to the
immigration authorities.’

I tried to explain that I was not the husband, I was the bride.

‘You’re the bride^ For God’s sake, do you realise what a mess
you’ve put the Army in^ There are a lot of things mentioned on
this sheet that you don’t have.’

Hesitantly I suggested: ‘But, Captain, since it is impossible
to change my sex to comply wdth Army report sheets, how about
checking over the things I do have?’ This, after contemplation,
he decided to do-

As we approached New York, landing cards were doled out.
The expected happened: every war bride but me received a
card. I took a day to straighten that out. Then, as our ship
entered the harbour, debarkation orders were distributed, and
only the Naturalisation and Immigration Service interview still
remained. For this I had to line up ^rith the war brides again.
As I came before the immigration oflScer he asked: ‘"WTiere is
your \vife? She has to appear herself.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I mumbled. ‘There is no wife. That’s me.
I’m listed as a female. But I can’t help it. I’m a male.’

‘This is most unusual,’ he said, eyeing me sternly. Then,
resignedly, ‘Okay, here’s your stamp.’

As we walked down the gang%vay, and I w'as about to set foot
on U.S. soil for the first time, a sergeant barked: ‘Hey, you, get
the hell back on that ship!’

My wife stepped into the breach. ‘But, Sergeant,’ she said
sweetly, ‘he is my war bride.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir - uh, ma’am. \Vell, then, I guess it’s all
right. Go ahead, keep her.’

Turning to the best player of the bridge four, the novice
asked, ‘How would you have played that last hand of
mine?’

‘Under an assumed name,’ was the prompt answer.

TWO FOR A PENNY

Condensed from 'The Grapes of Wrath'

JOHN STEINBECK.

Hamburger stands along Highway 66 - A1 & Susy’s Place -
Carl’s Lunch - Joe & Minnie - Will’s Eats. Two gasoline pumps
in front, a screen door, a long bar, stools, and a footrail. Near
the door three slot machines, showing through glass the wealth
in nickels three bars will bnng. And beside them, the mckel
phonograph -with records piled up like pies At one end of the
counter a covered case* candy, cigarettes, razor blades, aspinn,
Bromo-Seltzer. The walls decorated with posters, blondes in
white bathmg suits holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and smiling.
Beer taps behmd the counter, and in back the coffee urns, shmy
and steaming.

Minni R or Susy or Mae, middle-ageing behind the counter,
hair curled and rouge and powder on a siveating face. Taking
orders in a soft, low voice, calling them to the cook ivith a
screech like a peacock. Mopping the counter with circular
strokes, pohshmg the big, shining coffee urns The cook is Joe
or Carl or Al, hot in a white coat and apron, beady sweat on
white forehead, below the white cook’s cap; moody, rarely
speakmg, looking up for a moment at each new entry. He
repeats Mat’s orders gently, scrapes the griddle, ivipes it doivn
with burlap. Moody and silent.

Mae is the contact, smihng mechamcally - unless she is serv-
ing truck drivers. There’s the backbone of the jomt. 'NNTiere the
trucks stop, that’s where the customers come Can’t fool truck
drivers, they know. They bring the custom. They know. Mae
rejilly smiles with all her might at truck drivers.

A truck pulls up. Two men in khaki riding trousers, boots,
short jackets, andshiny-visored mihtarycaps Screen door- slam

H’ya, Mae’

Well,if It ain’t Big Bill the Rat* "When’d you get back on this
run?

FmlputluJiel m ‘Tke Riadtt’t Dtgaf tn ISIO

297

reader’s digest omnibus

298

Week ago.

Mae smiles. WeU, what’s it gonna be^

Oh, cup a Java. Kmda pie ya got^

Banana cream, pineapple cream, chocolate cream - an’ apple.

Make it apple.

Steam spurts from the valve of the coffee um. The compressor
of the ice machine chugs softly for a time and then stops. The
electric fan m the comer waves its head slowly back and forth,
sweeping the room with a warm breeze. On the highway, on
66, the cars whiz by.

Big Bill grasped his cup around the top so that the spoon
stuck up between his first and second fingers He drew in a
snort of air with the coffee, to cool it. ‘You ought to be out on
66. Cars from all over the country. All headin’ West.’

‘We seen a wreck this momm’,’ his companion said. ‘Big Cad,
a honey, low, cream-colour, special job. Hit a truck. Folded the
radiator right back into the driver. Must a been doin’ go
Steenn’ wheel went right on through the guy an’ lef’ him
a-wigglin’ like a frog on a hook.’

A1 looked up from his griddle. ‘Hurt the trucP’

‘Wasn’t really a truck. One of them cut-down cars full a
stoves an’ pans an’ mattresses an’ kids an’ chickens. Com’ West,
you know. This guy come by us doin’ go - r’ared up on two
wheels just to pass us, an’ a car’s cornin’ so he cuts in an’ whangs
this here truck. Drove like he’s bhn’ drunk. Never seen such a
mess. The air was full a bedclothes an’ chickens an’ kids Klilled
one kid. We pulled up. Ol’ man that’s dnvin’ the truck, he jus’
Stan’s there lookin’ at that dead kid Can’t get a word out of
’em. Jus’ rum-dumb. The road is full a them families goin’
West. Wonder where the hell they all come from?’

‘Wonder where they all go to,’ said Mae ‘Come here for gas
sometimes, but they don’t hardly never buy nothin’ else People
says they steal. We ain’t got nothin’ layin’ around. They never
stole nothin’ from us.’

Big Bill, munching his pie, looked up the road through the
screened -window. ‘Better tie your stuff down I think you got
some of ’em comm’ now.’

A igsb Nash sedan pulled weanly off the highway. The back
seat was piled nearly to the ceiling -with sacks, -with pots and
pans, and on the very top, nght up agamst the ceiling, two boys

TWO FOR A FENNY

299

rode. On the top of the car, a mattress 3uid a folded tent; tent
poles lied along the running board. The car pulled up to the
gas pumps. A dark-haired, hatchet-faced man got slowly out
and the two bo)^ shd down.

Mae walked around the counter and stood in the door. The
man ^vas dressed m grey wool trousers and a blue shirt. The

boys in ragged overalls and nothmg else Their faces were
streaked wth dust They went directly to the mud puddle under
the hose and dug their toes mto the mud.

The man asked, ‘Gan we git some irater, ma’am?’

A look of annoyance crossed Mae’s face ‘Sure, go ahead.’
She said softly over her shoulder, T’ll keep my eye on the hose ’
She watched while the man slowly unscrewed the radiator cap.

A woman m the car said, ‘See if vou can’t git it here.’

The man turned off the hose and screwed on the cap again
The httle boys took the hose from him and they upended it and
drank thirstily. The man took off lus dark, stamed hat and
stood wth a cunous hunuhty in front of the screen. ‘Could you
see your way to sell us a loaf of bread, ma’am”

Mae said, ‘This am’t a grocery store. We got bread to make
san’widges ’

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300

‘I know, ma’am.’ His humility was insistent. ‘We need bread
and there am’t nothin’ for quite a piece, they say.’

‘ ’P we sell bread we gonna run out.’ Mae’s tone was faltering.

‘"We’re hungry,’ the man said.

‘WTiyn’t you liuy a san’ividge?’

‘We’d sure admire to do that, ma’am. But we can’t. We got
to make a dime do all of us ’ And he said embarrassedly, ‘We
ain’t got but a httle.’

Mae said, ‘You can’t get no loaf a bread for a dime. We only
got 15-cent loafs.’

From behind her A 1 growled, ‘Hell, Mae, give ’em bread.’

‘We’ll run out ’fore the bread truck comes.’

‘Run out, then, goddamn it,’ said Al.

Mae shrugged her plump shoulders and looked to the truck
drivers to show them what she was up against.

She held the screen door open and the man came m, bringing
a smell of sweat with him. The boys edged in behind him and
they went immediately to the candy case and stared in - not
with craving or with hope or even ivith desire, but just wth a
kind of wonder that such things could be.

Mae opened a drawer and took out a long, waxpaper-wrapped
loaf. ‘This here is a 1 5-cent loaf.’

The man put his hat back on his head. ‘Won’t you — can’t
you see your way to cut oflf ten cents’ worth?’

Al said snarlingly, ‘Goddamn it, Mae. Give ’em the loaf.’

The man turned towards Al. ‘No, we want ta buy ten cents’
worth of it.’

Mae said resignedly, ‘You can have this for ten cents.’

‘That’d be robbm’ you, ma’am.’

‘Go ahead - Al says to take it.’ She pushed the wax papered
loaf across the counter. The man took a leather pouch from his
rear pocket. He dug in the pouch with a forefinger, located a
dime, and pinched in for it. When he put it down on the counter
he had a penny with it. He was about to drop the penny back
mto the pouch when his eye fell on the boys frozen before the
candy counter. He moved slowly down to them. He pointed in
the case at big, long sticks of striped peppermint. ‘Is them penny
candy, ma’am?’

Mae looked in. ‘"WTiich ones?’

‘There, them stripy ones.’

TWO FOR A PENNY 3OI

The little boys raised their eyes to her face and they stopped
breathing; their mouths were partly opened, their half-naJred
bodies were rigid.

‘Oh - them. Well, no - them’s two for a penny.’

‘Well, gimme two then, ma’am ’ He placed the copper cent
carefully on the counter. The bo^'s expelled their held breath
softly. Mae held the big sticks out.

‘Take ’em,’ said the man.

They reached timidly, each took a stick, and they held them
doivn at their sides and did not look at them But they looked
at each other, and their mouth comers smiled rigidly wth
embarrassment.

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ The man picked up the bread and
went out the door, and the little boys marched stiffly behind him,
the red-stnped sticks held tightly. They leaped like chipmunks
over the front seat and on to the top of the load.

The man got in and, ivith a cloud of blue smoke, the ancient
Nash went on its way "West.

From inside the restaurant the truck dnvers and Mae and A1
stared after them.

Big Bill wheeled back. ‘Them wasn’t tivo-for-a-cent candy,’
he said.

‘INTiat’s that to you?’ Mae said fiercely.

‘Them was nickel-apiece candy,’ said Bill

‘We got to get goin’,’ said the other man. ‘^Ve’re droppin’
time.’ They reached m their pockets. Bill put a com on the
counter and the other man looked at it and reached agam
and put doivn a com. They swung around and walked to the
door.

‘So long,’ said Bill.

Mae called, ‘Hey! Wait a minute. You got change.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Bill, and the screen door slammed.

Mae watched them get mto the great truck, watched it
lumber off. ‘AI — she said softly.

He looked up from his hamburgers *\STiat ya want?’

‘Look there ’ She pointed at the coins beside the cups - two
half dollars. Al ivalked near and looked, and then he went back
to his work.

‘Truck drivers,’ Mae said reverently.

The cars whizzed viciously by on 66.

The ‘little so lonesome house’ in Sweden, and what happened there

WHEN HANNAH VAR EIGHT YAR OLD

Condensed from The Atlantic Monthly

KATHARINE PEABODY GIRLING

‘ W ERE you a little girl, Hannah, when you came to America?’
I asked.

‘No,’ she rephed, letting her sewing fall m her lap as her
grave eyes sought mine slowly, ‘I var a big girl eight yar old.’
‘Eight years old? Does that seem to you big?’

‘Oh, well,’ Hannah explamed, ‘in Old Country if you are
eight yar old and comes younger child’n in famihe, you are old
woman; you gotta be, or who shall help de moder?’

‘Yes’ Did your father and mother bring you?’ I continued,
probing for the story.

‘No - fader and moder var daid. My h’aunt, se came for us.
It cost her twenty-eight dollar, but se do it.’

‘But surely you can’t go to Sweden and return for twenty-
eight dollars!’

‘Seventeen yar ago, yes, but of course you must to take your
own providmgs. It don’t reqmre much.’ Haimah’s shoulders
drew together expressively. ‘Madam knows se is apt to miss her
appetite at sea!’

‘But too well.’ I shrugged sympathetically. Then we both
laughed.

‘I can to tell you how it is I came on Ahmericah, but’ -
Hannah waited for words to express her warning - ‘it will make
you a sharp sadness.’

‘Please.’

‘I don’t know if I can tell it to you good, but I tell it so good
as I can My fader he var Swedish fisherman vat h’own his boat
and go away by weeks and weeks, and sometimes comes strong
wedder and he can’t make it to get home qmck.’ Hannah hesi-
tated, and then m lowered tones of soft apology added, ‘My

Ftrsl published in ‘The Reader’s DigesP in 1947

302

WHEK HANNAH VAR EIGHT YAR OLD 3O3

modcT SC var a ver’ pretty woman. Var t'ree child’n more as
me - Olga var six yar old, and Hilda four, and Jens - well, Jens
var vust a baby, suppose yar and half. Ve hve in a little house
dose on by de sea. It is yust a httle house, but it can to have a
shed with a floor of stone. De door of de shed is broken so it is
like a ^vmdow mitout glass.

“De house is dose on by a big dock where in somer time comes
big excursion steamer mit - suppose hundert tourist people who
climb on de mountain up de road. My moder se sell dem hot
cofiee, also bread and cheese, but dat is not de reason why ve
live in de little so lonesome house. It is de big dock is de reason
My fader he can to come home from late fishing mitout needing
dat he sail walk on de roads In Sweden in winter de roads
swallow snow till it makes dangersome to you to walk because
hides holes to step in. Ve hve dere all somer, but m late autumn
my fader he say, “^\Tiat about de winter’”

‘Mymodersesay, “I don’t know, but anyivay ve try it vonce.”

‘Den my fader he go aw’ay in his boat, and my moder se get
bad cold and comes sickness on her, and ven se couldn’t to keep
care on us by reason se is too weak, se lay on de cot m de kitchen
room and vatch on me dat I sail learn to keep care on de
child’n.’

“But w'hat did you hve on? How did you keep warm?’

304 reader’s digest omnibus

‘Oh - IS plenty fuel, and ve make hot stew of dried meat mit
rice and raisins.

‘One day my moder se say me, “Hannah,” se say, “you bam
a big girl; I must to tell you sometings. You fader is very late, it
seems, and winter comes now. I cannot to wait much more. It is
soon I got to go. You mustn’t take a fear of me if I come all
white like de snow and don’t talk mit you any more. De httle
child’n dey will take a fear and cry. I cannot to bring a fear on
my little child’n.”

‘So se tell me what I sail do — I sail close hot’ her eyes up and
tie her hands togeder and lock de shed door.’

‘The shed door!’

‘Ya.’

Hannah had resumed her serving. Her thread fairly snapped
as stitch fell by even stitch with monotonous rhythm. In quiet,
uneventful tone she continued*

‘So one night pretty soon se make dat I sail bring her best
nightgown and help her mit to put it on. Den se kiss de little
child’n in deir sleepings and se sit on a stool by de fire and say
I sail put Jens in her arms. Se try to rock back and fort’ and se
sing on him a httle hymn. But se is too weak, and I must to
take him. Den se put on me a shawl and tie it behind under my
arms, and se lean heavy on me, and we go out into de shed.

‘My moder se do her bare feet on de stone floor. Se have yust
but her nightgoivn on, but it is her best one mit crocheted lace
at de neck and ivnsts. Se tell me I sail put de ironmg board
across two chair seats, but it is too heavy and se sail try to help
me, but comes coughing on her and se must to hold on by de
shed door. Se look out across de road and de mountam all mit
snow white and mit moonlight cold. And blood is on her lips,
but se wipe it away mit a snow bunch. Well, anyway, ve do de
ironmg board across de chair seats and I spread a white sheet
and put a head cushion and my moder he do^vn and I cover
her mit a more other sheet over.

‘ “Oh, moder,” I say, “let me make some warm covering on
you.”

‘ “No,” se say, so soft dat I listen mit my ear, “I must to come
here while I yet have de stren’th, but I want to go quick away,
and in de cold I go more quick. Oh, Hannah!” se say, “my big
daughter! You are so comfortable to me!”

WHEN HANNAH VAR EIGHT YAR OLD 3O5

‘So I hold my moder’s hand. Pretty soon it comes cold. I dap
it mit mme, but it comes more cold. I crumple it up and breathe
my hot breath m it, but it comes not warm any more. So mit my
fader’s Sunday handkerchief I bind her eyes like if you play
Bhndman mit de child’n, and nut an apron string I tie her
hands togeder. Den I go back and make my hands warm in de
kitchen room and I take de comb down off de string, and I go
back to my moder and make her hair in two braids like as I did
all when se was sick. Aly moder se haf very strong hair; it is
doum by her knees on and so yellow — so yellow as a copper
teakettle! It could to haf been red, but it yust are not. Den I
lock de shed door and crawl in bed mit de child’n to make me
warm.

‘Next day I tell de child’n dat moder is gone away. Dey cry
some, but pretty soon dey shut up. Anyivay, it is so long se haf
lam on de cot m de kitchen room dat dey don’t haf to miss her.

‘So I keep care on de child’n and play mit dem and some
da)s go by. Comes a stronger wedder mit storms of sleet, and
snow, and de i%-ind sob and cry. Gomes nobody on. At night
when de child’n are sleepmg I unlock de shed door and go to
see if it makes all right mit my moder. Sometimes it is by de
moonlight I see on her, but more often it is by a candle glimmer.’

Hannah broke the subdued tone of her narrative to add m a
lower, more confidmg note, ‘It is mit me now dat when I see a
candle on light I haf a sharp sadness

‘Pretty soon de wedder is more better, and comes a man
tromphng troo de snow to tell my moder dat her husband can’t
come home - he is droivned in de sea. AN’hen he see how it is mit
my moder and imt me and de httle child’n, de water stands in
his eyes-ya. And he go on, troo de snow, t’ree, four mile
nearer on de city to de big castle where live de lady vat h’owm
all de land and se come in sleigh imt four horsen and big robes
of fur and ymghng bells. Se see on my moder and se go quick
aw'ay, but so soon as it can, se come again and se do on my
moder a w’hite robe, heav)' mit lace, most beautiful* And white
stockings of silk and white slippers broidcred mit pearlen. Se
leaf my moder’s hair, as I fix it, m two braids, but se put a
ivreath of flowers, wWte and green, yust like de real ones. Is
few real flowers in Sweden in ivmter. Anyway, dese var like de
flowers a girl vat gets mamed should to wear.

reader’s digest omnibus

306

‘Den my lady se send her sleigh dat all de people should come
and see on de so brave woman vat couldn’t to bnng a fear on
her little child’n. And de people dey make admiration on my
moder. Dey say it is de prettiest dey ever see it, and dey make
pity dat se couldn’t to see it herself.’ She paused and breathed
deeply. ‘I wish se could have to seen dose shppers*’

‘And did no one tell you that you were a wonderful little
girP’

‘Oh, veil - 1 var eight yar old.’

‘But what became of you alP’

‘My lady took us home m her sleigh imt - 1 want to stay nut
my moder, but se say I sail come to keep care on de child’n dat
dey don’t cry. And dey don’t cry - dey laugh mit de yinghng
bells. De need' was on me strong, but I don’t cry before my
lady. Se var great dame vat go in de court mit de queen. Se
sent men and dey do my moder in a coffin and carry her to a
little chapel house in cemetaire and in de spring ven de snow is
gone dey bury her. My lady se put a white stone mit my moder’s
name and some poetry - I can’t to say it good in English, but it
says, “De stren’th in de heart of her poor is de hope of Sweden.” ’

‘And then did your aunt come^’

‘Ya, my lady se wrote on my fader’s broder vat var in
Ahmericah. Se say we can to stay mit her, but my oncle he
send his wife, and we come back mit her on Ahmericah.’

0 ) 0(5

WHAT PRAYER CAN DO

Condensed from Cuideposts
FULTON OURSLER

One spring mormng when I was a small boy, my mother dressed
me up in my Sunday best and warned me not to leave the front
steps.

‘We’ll be walking over to see your aunt,’ she promised.

I waited obediently until the baker’s son from the comer shop
came along and called me a sissy. Then I sprang from the steps

First published m 'The Reader’s Digest' in 1951

WHAT PRAYER CAN DO 307

and whammed him on the ear. He shoved me into a mud
puddle, splotching my white blouse with slime and leaving my
stocking iMth a bloody hole at the knee. Hopelessly I began to
bawl

But my gnef was stilled at a sudden tinkle of bells. Down the
street came a pedlar, pushing his jingling green cart - ‘Hokey-
pokey ice cream, a penny apiece.’ Forgetting my disobedience,
I ran mto the house and begged my mother for a penny. Never
can I forget her answer:

‘Look at yourself! You’re in no condition to ask for anything.’

Many a harum-scarum year went by before it dawned on me
that often, when we ask for help from God, we need to take a
look at ourselves; we may be m no condition to ask Him for
anything.

Behevers admit no limits to what the power of prayer can do,
and e\'en sceptics uho study the results with an open mind
become impressed ivith the potency of faith. But if his prayers
are to be ansivered, a man has to meet his Maker half-way.

‘The trouble is that most prayers are not honest to God,’
declares a psychologist, a man of no rehgious faith ‘People
have the ungraaous audaaty to ask for heavenly handouts
although they are not on speaking terms wth their next-door
neighbour, they have forbidden relatives their house; they are
spreaders of gossip and envious detractors of their best friends.

‘To feel free of bitterness one must be nd of mahce, resent-
ment, env>', jealousy and greed, which are certain causes of
mental illness and even physical disease. Simply by obeying the
scnptural rule to be reconciled to our brother before prayer, we
can wash away these breeding germs of neuroses and psychoses.
Honest-to-God prayer is a kind of mental health insurance.’

In his Self-Improvement Handbook Norman Vmcent Pcale gives
two hmts on how to forgive.

(r ) ‘Repeat the Lord’s Prayer inserting your offender’s name:
‘Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive Henry Jones.’

(2 ) ‘Speak to others in a kindly manner about the person
against whom you harbour antagomsm.’

The more we can free our hearts of grudges and enmities,
the closer we come to the supreme goal of inner peace. Then
we begin to realise that prayer is infinitely more than an appeal

reader’s digest omnibus

308 -

for personal favours. It is itself the greatest of all gifts; an ever-
richer expenence, a continuous feeling of being in harmony
with the constructive forces of the universe. It brings the
wonders of ‘visiting God’ to the hfe of the humblest man of
faith. And that sense of di^dne companionship will powerfully
influence his thoughts and actions.

A young American Indian left his Huron tribe in northern
Wisconsin to be educated in city schools. He became a lawyer
and the green forests saw him no more, until in middle life he
returned for a hunting and fishing vacation. Presently his
woodsman gmde noticed that at every sundown the Indian
vanished for an hour. One day, beset with curiosity the guide
trailed him.

From behind the low spread of a hemlock tree, he watched
the Indian build a fire m an open clearing; saw him balance a
log across two stones on one side of the fire and place another
such bench on the opposite side, then seat himself on one of the
logs and stare into the blaze.

The guide started to walk towards the fire, w’hen the Indian,
seeing him, held up restraining hands. Without a word he
arranged another log and invited the gmde, by a gesture, to
join in his vigil. For half an hour the two remained together in
complete silence.

After they had returned to camp and eaten supper, the
Indian explained the mystery:

‘When I was a child my mother taught me to go oflF by
myself at the end of each day and make a place for a visit of the
Great Spirit. I was to think back over my actions and thoughts
of the day. If there was anything of w'hich I was ashamed, I
must tell the Great Spirit I was sorry and ask for strength to
avoid the same mistake agmn. Then I would sleep better that
night. I had forgotten all about it, but here, among these tall
trees where I played as a boy, I have found my lost faith. I have
not known such peace since I was a child. And from now on I
shall somehow manage to visit the Great Spirit every day.’

Ezio Pinza, the great Italian opera singer, who starred m the
musical play South Pacific, has his own story about the pathway
to peace:

‘On the night before South Pacific opened,’ said Pinza, ‘I told
Mary Martin if she could not sleep because of nervousness to

WHAT PRAYER GAN DO 3 O 9

do what I’d found best - get up, dress and go to the nearest
church. “Just sit there in church,” I said, “and soon all your
nerv^ousness i\t11 vanish, as if it had been smoothed away.” God
has been so good to me and my career has been so crowded with
great luck Aat I turn to Him ail the time. Others may fail;
God never WTien I explained this to Mary she started to cry,
and It was on this note that our fiiendship was founded.’

Commumon with the infimte is of solid value in our most
practical affairs. I know of a manufacturer who likes to drive
back and forth to work so that he can think about business
problems ivithout interruption
‘One morning,’ he relates, ‘I suddenly realised that problems
were alwaj's coming up that I had not anticipated How could
I think about crises before they ever happened^ Only by prayer.
Right there I began to pray that I might meet ivisely and well
the problems of the day ahead. I arrived at my office feeling
refreshed and confident, and I had one of my best days. I soon
realised that I had hit upon a wonderful technique. Instead of
praymg to get pulled out of troubles, I was now conditioning
myself in advance to make calm, rational and sound decisions
on any problem that came up *

The divine promise, ‘Ask and ye shall receive,’ does not
guarantee that you ivill receive exactly what you ask for. Often
ive do not knoiv ivhat is good for us; the old Greeks had a
proverb that ivhen the gods were angry with a man they gave
him what he wanted. Many of us have lived to be thankful that
our prayers were demed. The wise person adds a proviso to
every request. ‘Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done ’
There w'as Rosahe, the daughter of a poor Parisian, who
showed early promise of becommg a great artist. But an artist
needs more than promise. Rosahe w'anted to draw from hfe and
her father had no money to pay for a model. Very earnestly the
girl prayed for enough firancs to pay for a model’s hire, but no
show’er of money rained dowm on her backyard.

One day, as she was taking a ivalk, she had a sudden feeling
that everything was going to be all right. Near a crow’ded
market-place she noticed a farmer’s dray horse hitched for the
day behind a \egetable stall. He would not object to being her
model - not if Rosa did not mind drawmg a horse' In the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New' York Citj- there now hangs

I.

reader’s digest omnibus

310

a world-known canvas. The Horse Fair. It was painted by Rosa
Bonheur, impenshably famed for her masterpieces of horses.

As horizons broaden, we learn to ask less for ourselves and to
remember the needs of others, both friends and enemies -
healing for the sick, comfort for the grieving, help for the jobless,
mercy for all. ‘God make thee beautiful within,’ was Plato’s
prayer for those he loved.

^^^len the late Laurette Taylor was starring in her last
Broadway play, The Glass Menagene, her friends knew that she
was in poor health. They knew also that she had quarrelled
with her co-star, Eddie Dowling.

One midsummer matinee, in the course of a scene near a
table at which Dowhng was seated. Miss Taylor suddenly
swayed and grabbed a chair for support. The company manager,
feanng that she had been about to faint, rushed back to her
dressing-room as soon as the curtain fell.

‘I’m all right,’ Laurette assured him. ‘It was just that some-
thing happened on stage that nearly knocked me off my pins
We were playing the part where Eddie is supposed to be trying
to wnte something while I am scolding him. I happened to
look over his shoulder and saw that he really was svnting - and
what he was writing was a prayer. ''Dear God -please make
Laurette well and strong, and help us to be friends again.” ’

That prayer broke a black spell between the rival stars Later
I learned that for months at every performance Eddie Dowling
had been ■writing prayers for fhends and foes during that same
scene. ‘It kept my mind sweet - which it badly needed,’ Eddie
told me.

Even the old hostility of science is beginning to be tempered
by a respect for the incomprehensible mysteries of faith. Only
a few months ago. Dr Robert ^'lillikan, 82-year-old Nobel
Prize \vinner, and head of the California Institute of Technology,
told a group of leading physicists that a lifetime of scientific
research has con'vmced him that there is a Divinity that is
shaping the destiny of man. No scientist has delved more
deeply into the mechamsms of matter than Millikan. It was he
who first determined the charge and mass of the electron, the
smallest particle in the universe. In his recent speech he said'

‘Just how we fit into the plans of the Great Architect and
how much He has assigned us to do, we do not know, but if we

WHAT PRAYER. CAN DO 3II

fail in our assignment it is pretty certeim that part of the job
will be left undone.

‘But fit in we certainly do somehow, else we would not have
a sense of our own responsibihty. A purely matenahstic
philosophy is to me the height of unintelligence.’

As by an infallible instinct, great men of all ages turn to
God for help They seem to by-pass mtellectual doubt, finding
a short cut to umversal truth. No one has ever expressed it
better than Abraham Lincoln* T have had so many evidences
of His direction, so many instances w’hen I have been controlled
by some other pow’er than my mvn will, that I cannot doubt
that this power comes from above. I frequently see my "way
clear to a decision when I am conscious that I have not
sufficient facts upon which to found it . . I am satisfied that,
when the Alnughty wants me to do, or not to do, a particular
thing, He finds a ivay of letting me know it . . I am a full
bebever that God knows what He w’ants men to do, that w'hich
pleases Him. It is never well with the man who heeds it not.

‘I talk to God,’ Lincoln w*ent on to say. ‘My mind seems
reheved when I do, and a ivay is suggested ... I should be the
venest shallow and self-conceited blockhead, in my discharge
of the duties that are put upon me in this place, if I should hope
to get along without the \visdom that comes from God and not
from man.’

The hardest-headed sceptic can, through prayer, test this
guidance for himself. Let him try it as Lincoln did. He may
undertake the expenment as an unbeliever, but with an open
mind, seeking to learn for himself what prayer can do I
predict for him a senes of happy surprises.

The daughter of a wealthy Hollyivood producer was
asked at school to ivnte a story about a poor family Her
essay began ‘Once upon a time there was a poor family.
The mother was poor. The daddy was poor. The children
were poor. The butler was poor. The chauffeur was poor
The maid ivas poor. The gardener was poor. Everybody
was poor.*

PETRONELLA

Condensed from The Johannesburg Star
A. G. MCRAE

I STOOD m the dusty pound at Lydenburg, South Africa, and
watched the unwanted donkeys being put up for sale. Most of
the unfortunate animals were sold, and I didn’t hke the way
their new owners took possession, thrashing their purchases
before ever a task was set them and their ivillingness tested.
One by one, and in small groups, the little pilgrims were set on
the dreary road that leads through labour and starvation to
merciful death.

At last there was only one left, an old grey jenny ivith one
eye blinded and one tom ear hanging loppily from its middle.
She was covered with ticks, her knees were bent and her head
himg down. A picture of dejection.

A young native bid sixpence for her and laughed raucously.
I was prospecting for gold at the time and almost dowm but not
out, for I still had my tools and six shilhngs in cash. I had
intended buying a bag of meal and supplementing my sugar and
coffee supply. But now I knew that I must buy the aged jenny
and sacrifice a precious cartridge as well. Between the eyes and
a little above, and she’d never know what lut her.

I raised the bidding to a shilling and watched my extra coffee
go down the drain The other fellow bid one and three. I sent

Ftra published tn 'The Header’s Dtgesf in 1931

312

PETRONELLA

313

my sugar ration after the coffee and upped it threepence more.
2v£y opponent made a scornful remark and slouched off;
the donkey was mine to release through the barrel of my old
Smith and ^Vcsso^, as soon as we could get out of town For
no reason at all I named her Petronella.

Getting her out of town %vasn’t going to be easy, by the look
of her, so I dug into my pack for some salt, which is ambrosia
to asses the world over Her good ear pricked up as I held the
dainty under her muzzle Her nose MTiiakled ecstatically as she
cnmdied it, and she emitted those curious, death-rattle-hke
sounds which m the asinine etiquette indicate pleasure. With
more salt on my palm, I led her aivay and up the road.

It is bad manners to can-j' a gun in town, so the old Smith and
Wesson w as in my pack ^\Tien w'C came to a sufficiently remote
spot I transferred its holster to my belt.

The action reminded Petronella of goodies and she edged
nearer ingratiatmgly. I gave her a htde salt and then, for some
qmte inexplicable reason, I fastened my pack on her emaciated
back She pricked her good ear forward and started off up the
mountain trail m front of me as a well-trained pack ammal
should. Gone was the air of dejection, and gone, too, the bent
and trembhng knee. In place of the sorry moke m the pound
w'as a frail but determined old lady, loved and ready to get back
to the sort of task she understood. She brought a curious kind
of digmty to her labour.

I thought ‘Well, if she gives me any trouble or looks like
fallmg, I’ll bump her off, but it’s mce not having to carry the
pack.’ Even then I knew I could no more shoot Petronella
than fly

She ga\e me trouble all right. The very first mght she
chew ed my pack about, trjmg to get at the salt inside. The next
mght, after w'e had made camp, she disappeared I tliought:
‘Good riddance’, but then I started ivorrymg in case she had
broken a leg, or a snake had bitten her, and so I spent half the
mght searching. 'WTien I finally gave up and returned, she was
lying next to the ashes of my fire, chewing away at the pack
once more After that I stopped w'onying, and in the year during
which she and I fossicked around she often went off on her own
for a feiv hours, but ahvays came back in time to carry her load

She invented a httle game after she felt she knew me w'ell

reader’s digest omnibus

314

enough to take liberties. 'WTienever we approached a spinney
where the bush was thick, she w'ould gallop ahead and hide m
it. Ha\Tng found the sort of cover she needed to fool me, she
would stand dead still while I fumed and fretted, usually ^
within a couple of yards of her hide-out. After half an hour of
this kind of fun she would bray derisively, to show me w'here
she had been all the time, and then trot up and nuzzle at my
pockets, demandmg a rew’ard for being so darned clever.

Those were halcyon days, for our needs were small and the
country' supplied most of them. Long, hot days and clear, cool
nights, rain sometimes, but always followed by the drying-out
sun and wind. "We loiew thirst, too, but never badly, for
Petronella’s instinct was infallible and all I had to do was give
her her head and follow her lean little rump to a water-hole.

One day an old fellow turned up with a whole string of
donkeys, and one of them was a jack. Petronella should have
know'n better, at her age. But girls will be girls, and in due
course the horrible truth became obvious - Petronella was
about to become a mother.

^Vhen her time was near, I had to go into Lydenburg on
urgent business, and so I left her in charge of a boy I thought I
could trust. I returned inside a %veek, late at night and during
a terrific storm. I went to look for my boy to find out how
Petronella fared. He had disappeared, and so had most of my
kit. I stumbled around in the mud and rain, ^vaiting for flashes
of lightning to show me where the jenny was. And then I heard
the jackals )ip-yapping and snarhng on a plateau above the
spnng.

I got there just too late, for the brutes had tom at the little
body of the foal as it w'as bom, and it died as I lifted it up
Petronella had fought them ofiT for as long as she w'as able. She
w'as in a temble state, her muzzle ripped and her flank savaged.
Carrying the dead foal I led her back to the shack and bedded
her dowTi w'here I had light to see to dress her wounds.

All next day she follow'ed me about like a dog, and when I
stopped she pressed her head against my thigh, her misery too
much to bear alone. She would not eat or drink, and her one
fear seemed to be that I would go away and leave her again.
She died on the evening of the second day after my return, "tvith
her maimed ear pressed against my side and her poor, thin

SEVEN REASONS VrSY A SCSENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD 315

flatiTc heaving less and less, until it finally went quite flat and
was still

I dug a deep hole where no gold would ever be found and
cheated the jackals by laying hea\'y rocks over her body and
over the closed grave as well. I buned the child of her dotage
inth her.

As I did so I remembered the black cross etched over her
withers, the beam straight down her spine and the bar crucifix
from side to side. Coloured servants in the Cape used to tell us,
long ago, that the mark w'as imprmted on the hides of grey
donkeys because once The Man rode one in tnumphant
hunuhty before mankind.

SEyEN REASONS WHY A SCIENTIST
BELIEVES IN GOD

Adapted from the book *Man Does Kot Stand Alone'

A. GRESSY MORRISON

^Ve are Still in the dawn of the scientific age and every increase
of light reveals more bnghtly the handiwork of an intelhgent
Creator. In the go years since Danvin w'e have made stupendous
discoveries, with a spint of scientific humility and of faith
grounded in knowledge we are approaching even nearer to an
aw’areness of God.

For myself, I count seven retaons for my faith:

First' By unwavering mathematical law we can prove that our
universe was designed and executed by a great engineering Intelligence.

Suppose you put ten penmes, marked from one to ten, into
y'our pocket and give them a good shuffle. Now try to take them
out in sequence from one to ten, putting back the com each time
_and shaking them all again. Mathematically we know that
your chance of fust drawing number one is one to ten, of
drawing one and t\NO in succession, one to lOo; of drawing one,
tw’o and three in succession, one m a thousand, and so on; your
chance of drawing them all, from number one to number ten

first fviixs}‘td in *The Reader^s •« 1946

3i6 reader’s digest omnibus

in succession, would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance
in ten thousand inillion-

By the same reasoning, so many exacting conditions are
necessary for hfe on earth that they could not possibly exist in
proper relationship by chance. The earth rotates on its axis one
thousand miles an hour; if it turned at one hundred miles an
hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long as now,
and the hot sun would then burn up our vegetation each
long day while in the long mght any surviving sprout would
freeze.

Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature
of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is just far enough
away so that this ‘eternal fire’ warms us just enough and not too
much! If the sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we
would freeze, and if it gave half as much more, we would
roast.

The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives
us our seasons; if it had not been so tilted, vapours from the
ocean would move north and south, pihng up for us continents
of ice. If our moon was, say, only 50 thousand miles away
instead of its actual distance, our tides would be so enormous
that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the
mountains would soon be eroded away. If the crust of the earth
had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen,
ivithout which animal hfe must die. Had the ocean been a
few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been
absorbed, and no vegetable hfe could exist. Or if our atmosphere
had been much thinner, some of the meteors, now burned in
space by the millions every day, would be striking all parts of
the earth, setting fires everywhere.

Because of these and a host of other examples, there is not
one chance in millions that life on our planet is an accident.

Second: The resourcefulness of life to accomplish its purpose is a
manifestation of all-pervading Intelligence.

What hfe itself is, no man has fathomed. It has neither
weight nor dimensions, but it does have force, a growing root
will crack a rock. Life has conquered water, land and air,
mastering the elements, compelling them to dissolve and reform
their combinations.

Life, the sculptor, shapes all living things; an artist, it

SEVEN REASONS WTIY A SCXENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD 317

designs every leaf of every tree, and colours every flo^\e^. Life
IS a musician and has taught each bird to sing its love songs, the
insects to call each otlier in the music of tlieir multitudinous
sounds. Life is a sublime chemist, giiang taste to fruits and
spices, and perfume to the rose, changing -water and carbomc
acid mto sugar and -wood, and, in so doing, releasing oxj'gen
that animals may have the breath of life.

Behold an almost miosible drop of protoplasm, transparent,
jelly-hke, capable of motion, draivmg energ)’ from the sun. This
single cell, this transparent mist-hke droplet, holds within itself
the germ of life, and has the power to distribute this life to
every h\ang thing, great and small. The powers of this droplet
are greater than our vegetation and animals and people, for
all Ide came from it. Nature did not create life, fire-bhstered
rocks and a saltless sea could notmcet thenecessary requirements
"i\Tio, then, has put it her^

Tlurd* Animal zuisdom speaks trreststibly of a good Creator who
infused instinct into otherwise helpless little creatures
'The young salmon spends years at sea, then comes back to
his owm river, and travels up the very side of the nver into
which flows the tributary where he was bom \\Tiat bnngs him
back so precisely? If you transfer him to another tributary he
will know at once that he is off his course and he wnll fight his
w'ay down and back to the mam stream and then turn up
against the current to finish his destiny accurately.

Even more difiicult to solve is the m^’sterj'- of eels These
amazmg creatures migrate at maturity from all ponds and
nvers everjn\ here - those from Europe across thousands of
miles of ocean - all bound for the same abysmal deeps near
Bermuda. There diey breed and die. The little ones, wath no
apparent means of knowmg anything except that they are in
a wdldemess of water, nevertheless start back and find them
W'ay' not only' to the very' shore from which their parents came
but thence to the nvers, lakes or httle ponds -so that each
body of water is alw'ays populated with eels No American eel
has ever been caught in Europe, no European eel in American
w’aters. Nature has even delayed the matunty of the European
eel by a year or more to make up for its longer journey'. ^\Ticre
does the directing impulse originate^

A wasp will overpower a grasshopper, dig a hole in the earth,

reader’s digest omnibus

318

sting the grasshopper in exactly the right place so that he does
not die but becomes unconscious and lives on as a form of
preserved meat. Then the wasp will lay her eggs handily so that
her children when they hatch can nibble mthout killing the
insect on which they feed; to them dead meat would be fatal
The mother then flies away and dies; she never sees her young
Surely the wasp must have done all this right the first time and
every time, else there would be no wasps. Such mystenous
techniques cannot be explained by adaptation; they were
bestowed.

Fourth: Man has something more than animal instinct -the power
of reason.

No other anirrfel has ever left a record of its ability to count
ten, or even to understand the meaning of ten. WTiere instinct
is like a single note of a flute, beautiful but limited, the human
brain contains all the notes of all the instruments in the
orchestra. No need to belabour this fourth point; thanks to
human reason we can contemplate the possibihty that we arc
what we are only because we have received a spark of Umversal
Intelligence.

Fifth Provision for all living is revealed in phenomena which we
know today but which Darwin did not know — such as the wonders of
genes.

So unspeakably tiny are these genes that, if all of them
responsible for all living people in the world could be put in one
place, there would be less than a thimbleful. Yet these ultra-
microscopic genes and their companions, the chromosomes,
inhabit every hving cell and are the absolute keys to all human,
ammal and vegetable characteristics. A thimble is a small place
in which to put all the individual characteristics of two thousand
million human beings. However, the facts are beyond question.
Well, then - how do genes lock up all the normal heredity of a
multitude of ancestors and preserve the psychology of each m
such an infinitely small space?

Here evolution really begins - at the cell, the entity which
holds and carries the genes How a few milhon atoms, locked
up as an ultra-microscopic gene, can absolutely rule all life on
earth is an example of profotmd cunning and provision that
could emanate only from a Creative Intelligence; no other
hypothesis will serve.

SEVEX REASONS WHY A SCIENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD 319

Sixth* Bj the economy of nature, vce are forced to realise that only
tnfimts unsdom could have foreseen and prepared with such astute
husbandry.

Alany years ago a species of cactus was planted* in Australia
as a protective fence. Ha\ing no insect enemies m Austraha
the cactus soon began a prodigious g^o^\*th; the alarming
abundance persisted until the plants covered an area as long
and wde as England, crowding inhabitants out of the toivTis and
\Tllages, and destroying their farms. Seeking a defence, the
entomologists scoured the world; finally they turned up an
insect iihich hved exclusively on cactus, and would eat nothing
else. It would breed freely too; and it had no enemies in
Australia. So animal soon conquered vegetable and today the
cactus pest has retreated, and with it all but a small protective
residue of the insects, enough to hold the cactus m check for
e\er

Such checks and balances have been universally pro\-ided.
"Why have not fast-breeding insects dominated the earth?
Because they have no lungs such as man possesses; they breathe
through tubes But when insects grow large, their tubes do not
grow m ratio to the mcrcasmg size of the body Hence there
never has been an insect of great size, this limitation on growth
has held them all in check. If this physical check had not been
provided, man could not exist. Imagine meeting a hornet as
big as a lion!

Seventh. The fact that man can concave the idea of God is in itself
a unique proof.

The conception of God rises from a divine faculty* of man,
unshared with the rest of our world - the faculty* we call
imagination By its power, man and man alone can find the
evidence of things unseen The vista that power opens up is
unbounded; indeed, as man’s perfected imagination becomes a
spintual reahty*, he may discern m all the evidences of design
and purpose the great truth that heaven is wherev'er and what-
ever; that God IS ev*ery'where and in everything but nowhere so
close as in our hearts.

It IS scientifically* as well as imaginatively true, as the
Psalmist said . The heavens declare the glory of Cod and the firmament
skowetk Hu handiiLork.

‘MY NINETY ACRES’

Condensed from ^Pleasant Valley'

LOUIS BROMFIELD

I HAD a friend, an old man, who lived in Possum Run Valley
on a farm known as ‘My Nmety Acres’. Years ago when \Valter
Oakes was young, everybody used to speak of ‘My Ninety
Acres’ with a half-mocking, half-affectionate smile, because
"Walter always talked as if it were a ranch of many thousand
acres or a whole empire. But as time passed the mockery went
out and ‘Aly Ninety Acres’ became simply the name of the
farm.

Old "Walter had a right to speak of it with pride It wasn’t a
bright new place, but the small white house -with its green
shutters looked prosperous, the huge fire-red bam was magnifi-
cent, and there were no finer cattle m the whole county.

The place had a Mid natural beauty. The patches of la^vn
were kept neatly mowed but surrounding them grew a jungle
of old-fashioned flowers and shrubs. Beyond the neat vegetable
garden the romantic shaggmess continued. The Mre along the
fence rows v/as hidden beneath sassafras and elderberry and
Mid black raspberr\% The place was shaggj' not because ^Valter
was lazy or a bad farmer - there v.-as no more hard-working
man in the v/hole Valley - but because ^Valter wanted it like
that, "Walter and Nellie.

I never saw Nelhe Oakes, but my father told me she had been

Ftrd puc^ shsd ir ‘The Reader*s tn 1945

320

‘my ninety acres’

321

the prettiest girl in the Valley. She taught school until, at 22,
she married "Walter. People wondered why she chose "Walter,
who had only 90 acres of poor hill land he had just bought,
when she coiild have had any catch of the Valley. But I know
from all the long story it was simply because she loved him.

In the parlour of the little house on ‘hly Ninety Acres’ there
hangs an enlarged hand-coloured photograph of "Walter and
NeUie taken at the time of their marriage. The bnde and
bridegroom are stiff as statues. "Walter, stalwart and handsome
and gentle, stands with one big muscular hand on Nellie’s
shoulder. She sits on a chair in front of him in a white dress
•with leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a frill flounced skirt - dark, wrth
big eyes, holdmg in her small hands a lace handkerchief and
a bunch of lilacs. She looks beautiful and mtelligent. Old
people still say, in the Valley, ‘Nelhe Oakes was the only
woman I ever knew w’ho was as smart as she w^as pretty.’

Nellie died when her second son, Robert, was bom. But
sometimes when my father and I walked about the fields of
*My Ninety Acres’ tvith Walter and his boys, I wasn’t at all
sure she w'asn’t there, enjojing the beauty and richness as much
as Walter himself. ‘Nellie w'2inted me to put this field into
pasture but we couldn’t afford not to use it for row crops,’ he
would say, or, ‘It’s funny how’ many good ideas a %\oman can
have about farming. Now, Nelhe alivays said . . .’ Sometimes
I’d return to the house almost belie\'ing that I would find there
the Nelhe w'ho was dead before I ivas bom, w’aiting with a good
supper ready.

Walter never married agam, though a good many wdows
and spinsters set their caps for him. He didn’t leave ‘My
Ninety Acres’ save to go into tow’n or to church on Sunday with
the boys, John and Robert.

I used to fish and s^vim with the boys, and got to know them
w’ell. But I w’ent away from the county w'hen I was 17 and I
w’as gone 25 years. The war came, and in it John w'as killed at
St- 2 Mihiel. Robert came back from the war, but he did not
stay on the farm. Ambitious always, he became president of a
corporation and made milhons. He tried for years to get his
father to give up the farm and live in the city or in Florida, but
Walter alw’a^’s refused.

In the first w'eeks after I came home I never thought about

is waiter uaKes stiu aiivc^ i asKea.

‘AliveJ’ came the reply. ‘I’ll say he’s alive. The livest old man
in the county. You ought to see that place. He raises as much
on it as most fellows raise on five times that much land.’

The next Sunday I tramped over the hills to ‘My Ninety
Acres’. As I came down the long hill above the farm I thought,
‘This is the most beautiful farm in America.’

It was June and the herd of fat Cattle stood knee-deep in
alfalfa, watching me. The com was waist-high and vigorous
and green, the oats thick and strong, the wheat already turning
a golden-yellow.

As I went down towards the creek I saw old "Walter with two
sheepdogs mo\ang along a fence row. I stood for a moment,
watching. The old man would walk a little way, stop, part the
bushes, and peer into the tangled sassafras and elderberry.
Once he got down on his knees and for a long time disappeared
completely.

Finally, the barking of the dogs as they came towards me
attracted his attention. He stopped and peered, shading his
eyes.

‘I know,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘you’re Charlie
Bromfield’s boy.’

I said I’d been trying to get over to see him and then he
asked, ‘And your father? How’s he?’

I told him my father was dead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, very
casually as if the fact of death was nothing. ‘I hadn’t heard. I
don’t get around much.’ Then suddenly he seemed to realise
that I must have seen him dodging in and out of the fence row.
A faint tinge of colour came into his face. ‘I was just snoopin’
around “My Ninety Acres”. Nelhe always said a farm could
teach you more than you could teach it, if you just kept your
eyes open. . . . Nelhe was my wife.’

‘I remember,’ I said.

Then he said, ‘Come and I’ll show you something.’

I followed him along the fence row and presently he knelt
and parted the bushes. ‘Look!’ he said, and his voice grew
suddenly warm. ‘Look at the little devils.’

I could see nothing but dried broivn leaves and a few

They sat in a Kttle arcle in a nest, none of them much bigger
than the end of one of old Walter’s big thumbs - seven tim
quail. They never mo\ed a feather.

Old Walter stood up. ‘They used to laugh at me for letting
the bushes grow up in my fence roi\s.’ He chuckled. ‘Last year
Henry Talbot lost ten acres of com all taken by chincli bugs.
Henry doesn’t leave enough cover along his fence roivs for a
grasshopper. He thinks that’s good farming!’ He chuckled
again, ‘^\'hen the chinch bugs come along to eat up m-y com,
these little fellois-s ivill take care of ’em.’

"We ^^ere -walking now towards the house. ‘Nellie had that
idea about lettm’ fence rows grow up. I didn’t beliei e her at
first. But I alwa^'s finmd out that she v.as pretty right about
farmin’.’

At the house, old "Walter said, ‘Come in and we’ll have a
glass of buttermilk. It’s cooler in the sittin’ room.’ The butter-
milk was such as I had not tasted in 30 years - creamy, icy cold
with little flakes of butter in it.

*you’re li-ving here alone?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I started to say something and then held my tongue, but old
"Walter di-vined w'hat I meant to ask ‘No. It ain’t lonci) . Nellie
used to say she didn’t understand the talk of these w’omen who
said they got lonely on a farm. Nellie said there was alwa>’s
calves and horses and dogs and lambs and pigs and that their
company w'as about as good as most of them women who
talked that w’ay.’

The Sunday afternoon ^^sits to ‘My Ninety Acres’ became a
habit, for I found that old Walter knew' more of the funda-
mentals of soil, of crops, of hv«tock than an> man I ha\e ever
knowm. ^Ve were not always alone on those Sunday walks
because neighbours and e\en farmers from a great distance
came sometimes to see Walter’s farm and hear him talk about
it. As he told the history of this field or that one, and v hat he
had learned firom each, a kmd of fire w’ould come into the blue
eyes.

One day Robert came on his annual -visit, and droie oxer to
see if I could help persuade the old man to retire ‘He’s 75 now

324 reader’s digest omnibus

and I’m afraid something "will happen to him alone there m
the house or bam. But he’s stubborn as a mule and won’t quit.
This morning he was up at daylight and husking com in the
bottom field by seven o’clock.’

We were both silent for a time sitting on the porch over-
looking the Valley. The green ivinter wheat was springing into
life m the fields beyond the bottom pasture where the Guernseys
moved slowly across the blue grass. ‘Honestly, Bob,’ I said, ‘I
don’t see why we should do anything. He’s happy, he’s tough
as nails, and he loves that place like a woman.’ Then, hesitantly,
I said, ‘Besides, Nellie is always there looking after him.’

A startled look came into the son’s eyes. ‘Do you feel that
way too^’

I said, ‘Nelhe is everywhere m that “Ninety Acres”. She’s
out there husking com with him now.’

‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ Robert said. ‘Sometimes I think
the old gentleman gets Nellie and the “Ninety Acres” a little
mixed up.’

We finally agreed that there wasn’t anything to be done. I
said I’d keep my eye on old ^Valter. And so every day for two
years I, or somebody from the place, went over.

One Sunday afternoon in early September he and I were
walking alone through one of his cornfields. It was fine com,
and as we came near the end of a long row, he stopped before a
mighty single stalk which had two huge nearly ripened ears and
a third smaller one. Old Walter stopped and regarded it with
a glowing look in his blue eyes.

‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘Ain’t it beautiful? That’s your hybrid
stuff ’ His hands ran over the stalk, the leaves and the ears. ‘I
wish Nelhe could have seen this hybnd com. She wouldn’t have
beheved it.’

As I watched the big work-worn hand on the stalk of corn,
I understood suddenly the whole story of Walter and Nelhe
and the ninety acres'. The rough hand that caressed that com
was the hand of a lover. It was a hand that had caressed a
woman who had been loved as few ^vomen have been loved, so
deeply and tenderly that there could never have been another
woman to take her place. I knew now what Robert’s remark
about Nellie and the ninety acres getting mixed up had meant.

aj! 4;

■AND SDDDEN DEATH

325

It happened at last. I went over one afternoon and when I
could not find old Walter or the dogs anyvshere I returned to
the house. I heard scratching and whitung in the ground-floor
bedroom, and when I opened the door one of the sheepdop
came tcrvvards me. The other dog lay on the hooked rug beside
the bed, his head between his pai\s. On the bed lay old Walter.
He had died qmetly while he t^^as asleep

'iValter was biuied beside Nelhe m the Valiev churchyard

« *

Robert wouldn’t sell ‘hly Ninet\' Acres’. I undertook to farm
it for him, and one of our men went there to hve But it mil
never be fanned as old Walter farmed it. There isn’t an) body
who ivill ever farm that earth agam as if it w'cre the only
woman he ever loved.

« ■

—AND SUDDEN DEATH

J. C. FURNAS

Publicising the total of motoring injuries - almost a million
last year, wnth 36,000 deaths - never gets to first base in jarring
the motorist into a reahsation of the appalling nsks of motonng.
He does not translate dry statistics mto a rcahty of blood and
agony.

Figures exclude the pain and horror of savage mutilation -
which means they leave out the pomt They need to be brought
closer home A passing look at a bad smash or the news that a
fellow you had lunch wnth last w eek is in a hospital with a broken
back mil make any driver but a bom fool slow down at least
temporarily. But w'hat is needed is a virid and sustained realisa-
tion that every time you step on the throttle, death gets in
beside you, hopefully w aiting for his chance That single horrible
accident you may have witnessed is no isolated horror That
sort of thing happens every hour of the day, everywhere in the
United States If ) ou really felt that, perhaps the stickful of 1)^30
in 2 iIonda)’s paper recording that a total of 29 local citizens
w'ere killed in week-end crashes would rate something more
than a perfunctory tut-tut as you turn back to the sports page.

firsf in *Tke Rtadcr^s Digesf in 1935

reader’s digest omnibus

326

An enterpnsing judge now and again sentences reckless drivers
to tour the accident end of a city morgue. But even a mangled
body on a slab, wzixily portraying the consequences of bad
motoring judgment, isn’t a patch on the scene of the accident
Itself No artist ivorking on a safety poster would dare depict
that in full detail.

That picture would have to include motion-picture and
sound effects, too - the flopping, pomtless efforts of the injured
to stand up; the queer, grunting noises; the steady, panting
groaning of a human being with pain creeping up on him as
the shock wears oflT. It should portray the slack expression on
the face of a man, drugged with shock, staring at the Z-twist m
his broken leg, the insane crumpled effect of a child’s body after
its bones are crushed inward, a realistic portrait of an hysterical
woman with her screammg mouth opening a hole in the bloody
dnp that fills her eyes and runs off her chin. Minor details
would include the raw ends of bones protruding through flesh
in compound fractures, and the dark red, oozing surfaces where
clothes and skin were flayed off at once.

Those are all standard, everyday sequels to the modern pas-
sion for going places in a hurry and taking a chance or two by
the way. If ghosts could be put to a useful purpose, every bad
stretch of road in the United States would greet the oncoming'
motorist with groans and screams and the educational spectacle
of ten or a dozen corpses, all sizes, sexes and ages, lying horribly
still on the bloody grass.

Last year a state trooper of my acquaintance stopped a big
red Hispano for speeding. Papa wzis obviously a responsible
person, obviously set for a pleasant week-end with his family -
so the officer cut into papa’s well-bred expostulations . T’ll let
you off this time, but if you keep on this way, you won’t last
long. Get going - but take it easier.’ Later a passing motonst
hailed the trooper and asked if the red Hispano had got a ticket.
‘No,’ said the trooper, ‘I hated to spoil their party.’ ‘Too bad
you didn’t,’ said the motonst, ‘I saw you stop them - and then I
passed that car again 50 miles up the line. It still makes me feel
sick at my stomach. The car was all folded up like an accordion
— the colour was about all there was left. They were all dead
but one of the kids - and he wasn’t going to live to the hospital.’

Maybe it will make you sick at your stomach, too. But unless

— AND SUDDEN DEATH

327

you’re a heavy-footed incurable, a good look at the picture the
artist wouldn’t dare paint, a first-hand acqu^tance wdth the
results of mixing gasoline with speed and bad judgment, ought
to be well worth your while. I can’t help it if the facts are
revolting. If >^00 hav'e the nerv'e to drive fast and take chances,
you ought to have the nerve to take the appropnate cure. You
can’t ride an ambulance or v\'atch the doctor working on the
victim in the hospital, but you can read.

The automobile is treacherous, just as a cat is It is tragically
difficult to realise that it can become the deadliest missile. As
enthusiasts tell you, it makes 65 feel like nothing at all. But 65
an hour is 100 feet a second, a speed which puts a vaciously
unjustified responsibility on brakes and human reflexes, and
can instantly turn this doale luxury into a mad bull -elephant.

Ckilhsion, turnover or sideswipe, each type of accident pro-
duces either a shattenng dead stop or a crashing change of
direction - and, since the occupant - meaning you - continues
in the old direction at the original speed, every surface and
angle of the car’s interior immediately becomes a battenng,
tearing projectile, aimed squarely at you - inescapable. There
is nobracing) ourselfagamst these impcrativ e law s of momentum.

It’s like going over Niagara Falls m a steel barrel full of rail-
road spikes. The best thing that can happen to vou - and one of
the rarer things - is to be thrown out as the doors spnng open,
so )ou have only the ground to reckon with. True, you strike
with as much force as if you had been thrown from an express
tram at top 'speed But at least you arc spared the lethal array
of gleaming metal knobs and edges and glass inside the car.

An>Thmg can happen m that split second of crash, even those
lucky escapes you hear about. People hav e dived through wind-
screens and come out with only superficial scratches They have
run cars together head on, reducing both to twisted junk, and
been found unhurt and arguing bitterly two minutes aftenvards.
But death was there just the' same - he was only exercising his
privilege ofbeing erratic. This spring a wrecking crew pnsed the
door off a car which had been overturned down an embank-
ment and out stepped the dnver with onh a scratch on his
cheek But his mother was still inside, a splinter of wood from
the top driven four inches into her brain as a result of son’s
taking a greasv* curv'e a httle too fast. No blood - no hombly

328 reader’s digest omnibus

twisted bones -just a greyhaired corpse still clutching her
pocket-book in her lap as she had clutched it when she felt the
car leave the road.

On that same curve a month later, a light touring-car crashed
a tree. In the middle of the front seat they found a nme-months-
old baby surrounded by broken glass and yet absolutely unhurt.
A fine practical joke on death -but spoiled by the baby’s
parents, still sitting on each side of him, instantly killed by
shattering their skulls on the dashboard.

If you customanly pass without clear vision a long way ahead,
make sure that every member of the party carries identification
papers - it’s difficult to identify a body with its whole face
bashed in or tom off. The driver is death’s favourite target. If
the steering wheel holds together it ruptures his hver or spleen
so he bleeds to death internally. Or, if the steenng wheel breaks
off, the matter is settled instantly by the steering column’s
plunging through his abdomen.

By no means do all head-on collisions occur on curves. The
modem death-trap is likely to be a straight stretch \vith three
lanes of traffic - like the notorious Astor Flats on the Albany
Post Road where there have been as many as 27 fatalities in one
summer month. This sudden vision of broad, straight road
tempts many an ordinarily sensible driver into passing the man
ahead. Simultaneously a driver coming the o^er way swings
out at high speed. At the last moment each tnes to get into line
again, but the gaps are closed. As the cars in line are forced into
the ditch to capsize or crash fences, the passers meet, almost
head on, in a swirling, gnnding smash that sends them cannoning
obliquely into the others.

A trooper described such an accident - five cars in one mess,
seven killed on the spot, two dead on the way to the hospital,
two more dead in the long run. He remembered it far more
vividly than he wanted to - the quick way the doctor turned
away from a dead man to check up on a woman with a broken
back; the three bodies out of one car so soaked with oil from
the crankcase that they looked like wet, brown cigars and not
human at all; a man, walking around and babbling to himself,
obhvious of the dead and dying, even oblivious of the dagger-
like sliver of steel that stuck out of his streaming wnst; a pretty
girl wth her forehead laid open, trying hopelessly to crawl out

— AND SUDDEN DEATH 329

of a ditch in spite of her smashed hip. A first-dass massacre of
that sort is only a question of scale and numbers - sc\ en corpses
are no deader than one. Each shattered man, \\ oman or diild
who went to make up the 36,000 corpses chalked up last year
had to die a personal death.

A car careemng and rolhng down a bank, battering and
smashing its occupants every inch of the tvTiy, can wTap itself so
thoroughly round a tree that front and rear bumpers interlock,
requirmg an acetylene torch to cut them apart. In a recent
case of that sort they found the old lady, •who had been sitting
in the back, lying across the lap of her daughter, who w as in front,
each soaked in her otvn and Ae other’s blood indistinguishabh ,
each so shattered and broken that there was no point t\hatcvcr
in an autopsy to determine w’hcthcr it was broken neck or
ruptured heart that caused death

Overturning cars spcciahse m certain injuries. Cracked pchns,
for instance, guaranteeing agonising months in bed, motionless,
perhaps cnppled for life -broken spine resulting from sheer
sideivise twist - the minor details of smashed knees and splintered
shoulder blades caused by crashing into the side of the car as
she goes over \rith the swirl of an insane roller coaster - and the
lethal consequences of broken ribs, which puncture hearts and
lungs ivith their raw ends The consequent internal hemorrhage
is no less dangerous because it is the pleural instead of the
abdominal cavity that is filhng wth blood.

’ Flying glass - safety glass is by no means universal yet - con-
tributes much more than its share to the spectacular side of
accidents. It doesn’t merely cut - the fragments arc dri\cn in as
if a cannon loaded wth broken bottles had been fired in your
face, and a sliver in the eye, travelling tvith such force, means
certain blindness. A leg or arm stuck through the wndshicld
trill cut clean to the bone through vein, artery and muscle like
a piece of beef imder the butcher’s knife, and it takes little time
to lose a fatal amount of blood under such circumstances Even
safety glass may not be wholly safe t\hen the car crashes some-
thing at high speed. You hear picturesque talcs of how a fl>nng
human body wll make a neat hole in the stuff wth its head -
the shoulders stick - the glass holds - and the rat\ , keen edge of
the hole decapitates the body as neatly as a guillotine.

Or, to continue wth the decapitation motif, going off the

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330

road into a post-and-rail fence can put you beyond worrying
about other injunes immediately when a rail comes through the
windshield and tears off your head with its sphntery end - not
as neat a job but thoroughly efficient. Bodies are often found
with their shoes off and their feet all broken out of shape. The
shoes are back on the floor of the car, empty and with their
laces still neatly tied. That is the kind of impact produced by
modem speeds.

But all that is routine in every American community. To be
remembered individually by doctors and policemen, you have
to do something as grotesque as the lady who burst the ^vlnd-
shield with her head, splashing splinters all over the other
occupants of the car, and then, as the car rolled over, rolled
with It down the edge of the windshield frame and cut her
throat from ear to ear. Or park on the pavement too near a
curve at night and stand in front of the tail light as you take off
the spare tyre -which will immortalise you in somebody’s
memory as the fellow who was mashed three feet broad and
two inches thick by the impact of a heavy duty truck against
the rear of his own car. Or be as original as the pair of youths
who were thrown out of an open roadster this spring - thrown
clear -but each broke a windshield post with his head in
passing and the whole top of each skull, down to the eyebrows,
was missing. Or snap off a nine-inch tree and get yourself
impaled by a ragged branch.

None of all that is scare-fiction; it is just the homble raw
material of the year’s statistics as seen in the ordinary course of
duty by policemen and doctors, picked at random There is
little dissimilarity in the stories they tell.

It’s hard to find a surviving accident victim who can bear to
talk. After you come to, the gnawing, searing pain throughout
your body is accounted for by learning that you have both
collar bones smashed, both shoulder blades splintered, your nght
arm broken in three places and three nbs cracked, with every
chance of bad internal ruptures. But the pain can’t distract
you, as the shock begins to wear off, from realising that you are
probably on your way out. You can’t forget that, not even when
they shift you from the ground to the stretcher and your broken
nbs bite into your lungs and the sharp ends of your collar bones
slide over to stab deep into each side of your screaming throat.

GH.AKD CAXYOS

331

^Vhen you’ve stopped screaming, it all comes back~\ou’rc
dying and >ou hate yourself for it. That isn’t fiction, cither. It's
what It actually feels like to he one of that 36,000.

And every time you pass on a blind cune, every time vou
hit it up on a slipperj’ road, every time -s ou step on it harder
than your reflexes isill safely take, e\er>' time >ou dri\c mth
your reactions slowed doira b) a dnnk or tivo, c\CTy time >ou
follow the man ahead too closely, you’re gambling a few seconds
against this kind of blood and agony and sudden death.

Take a look at ^-ourself as the man m the uhite jacket shakes
his head over you, tells the boys inth the stretcher not to bother
and turns airay to somebody else who isn’t quite dead yet. -And
then take it easy.

GRAND CANYON

DOKALD CULROSS PEATTIE

/

To A vast and incomparable sohtude, known the world over,
come the great and the simple of earth, all in a spint of man cl
A maharajah, his retinue at a respectful distance; a troop of
Swedish students with knapsacks on their backs; an Indiana
w’oman of go in her wheel chsur, a millionaire whose name is a
household word, walking apart here wnth his son back from
years of battle; the Shah of Iran, refusing bod\guards and
Secret Service men that he might be alone with Allah’s handi-
w ork, travellers from every state m .America, from c\ cry countn
m Europe and Asia they' come, pilgrims to a shnne that is
greater ^an creed.

The Grand Canyon of America’s Colorado River is one of
the wonders of the world, unsurpassed in vastness, antiquiti
and splendour. Of all the world’s spectacles no other has its
power to still the restless pulse and uplift the human sou!

Buried in the remote deserts of the North -American continent,
reached only by a long detour w’hethcr by tram or car. the
Canyon is ne\crtheless N’lsitcd at the South Rom alone by as
many as 7,000 tra\ellcrs a It guards its awcsomcncss from

Fin* tn Tkf Feeder s tn 1931

332 reader’s digest omnibus

sight up to the last moment. It gives no hint of its presence as
you approach for miles over imperceptibly rising land, through
sage-brush and then through pines. At last you are walking
towards it; still you do not see it - and in the next moment you
have stepped to the terror and grandeui of its brink.

Here is immensity; almost another dimension. In this abyss,
a mile deep and ten miles wide, the chasms drop away into
farther depths that disappear into a night of deeps like the
ocean’s. Here are colours raised to a soundless shout - smoulder-
ing reds, purples of shadow recessed into a fathomless past,
yellow dunes and shores of seas that vamshed ages ago. Far
down where a ghnt of the river shows, lies sullen black rock -
Archean rock, the scientists call it, the oldest known to us.

Up from those nethermost realms comes welhng silence.
Seldom can you hear the roar of the river, second longest in
the Umted States and fiercest in the world. You cannot catch
the patter, like applause, from the leaves of the cottonwoods
on the shelf-like plateau below you For all sounds are swallowed
in this gulf of space. ‘It makes you want to whisper,’ I heard a
woman near me murmur to her compamon

This is a silence not of death; rather it is a presence. It flows
into you like great music. But music made of man works up to a
climzix and ceases; the Grand Canyon is all climax, a chord
echoing into eternity.

For that fourth dimension you feel in the Canyon is, of course,
time - time in unstmted measure. It took the Colorado River,
with its tributaries, several million years to cut the Grand
Canyon. Yet the river is a newcomer; it didn’t even begin to
flow until seas of past ages, here in these Arizona wastes, had
come and gone several times, laying down beds of sediment.
But before the seas there were those Archean rocks, once the
roots of mighty mountains, formed when the earth was young.
That was two thousand million years ago, the geologists esti-
mate. So here at the Canyon, in a single view, is revealed more
of the history of earth than an^^vhere else in the world.

The grinding might of the river, which carries a million tons
of sediment a day, the cold chisel of frost and the little blades of
ram together have cut this great cross-section of the past Testi-
mony written in rock is here laid bare for science to read.
Indeed, at one glance, you perceive that there is a magnificent

GRAND CANYON

333

order running through these fantaries in stone, these reckless
outpourings of brilliance. The same bands of rock, distinct in
thickness and colour and angle, can often be traced along the
217 miles of the Cannon’s length Like a great siain\-a\ the
alternating chffs and plateaux lead the eye up, as one geologic
step succeeds another, from the age of chaos, before there is-as any
life, right into the sunshine of the present, where the pondcrosa
pmes stand tall in the dry Arizona air, where the browsing deer
gaze mildly, where wild flowers dance to the \cx\ rim, and
the mind of man ventures forth to imderstand the bcautt it
beholds.

Perhaps the most spectacular feature of the Grand Canxon is
the great Redwall limestone chff about half-wa\ up the chasm,
almost vertical throughout the Canyon's length and averaging
550 feet m height. Really a grey-blue hmestone, its surface has
been stained to this sunset hue by iron salts washing out of the
rocks The purity of this limestone indicates that it was formed
in a wide and quiet sea, full of beautiful sca-shells and fish of a
type no longer known.

Above the great Redw’aU come alternating lav ers of red sand-
stone and shale, a thousand feet m thickness, which show the
fossils of insect wings and fern fronds and the quaint, stubby -toed
tracks of extinct animals related to our frogs Then there must
have followed a long period of desert conditions for the next
layer, pale-hued, seems to have been formed by viind-blown
sands The topmost layers arc a yellowish limestone, laid down
m warm seas, we can be sure, because so manv shark’s teeth
and corals have been found fossilised in them.

For ages untold after the nver came the Canvon grew, glow-
ing with summer's fires, glistening with winter’s snows, time
passing over it hkc the shadows of the clouds that give it its
ever-changing expressions. In the fullness oftliat time came men
to hve in its shelter, prehistonc red men whose dwelling-places,
more than 500 of them, have been found m the side canyons A
thousand years, perhaps, these tribes hv ed here. .And after they
were gone there passed nearly' a thousand more vears before a
little band of wearv' Spamards, soldiers of Coronado, stumbled
to the nm and saw the Canyon first of white men

Then came Spanish missionaries American trappers and
explorers. Always the Canyon awed and baffled them; they

reader’s digest omnibus

334

could not find a way do\vn its sides, and because of its great
length it forced them hundreds of toihng miles out of their way
into the deserts. Then in 1858 bold young Lieut. Joseph
Ives, having forced his way m a steamboat up-river to the site
of the present Hoover Dam, led his little party of Army engineers,
guided by Mohave Indians, afoot into the depths of the Grand
Canyon. Here he visited the friendly Havasupai tribe which
lived then, and still lives, in one of the side canyons, where the
climate is sub-tropical the year round. ‘Ours has been the first
party,’ reported Ives, ‘to visit this profitless locality.’ Then
he added the rash prediction that it would doubtless be the
last.

Today, and every day, a mule train bearing tourists and
supplies descends Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim to the
Canyon’s floor. There lies Phantom Ranch, complete with
swimming pool. Here the trail crosses the raging Colorado by a
suspension bridge and moxmts to the North Rim, wherjg/the
Union Pacific Railroad maintains a summer hotel rivalling the
fine accommodations on the South Rim where the Santa Fe line
comes in.

Though these two resorts face each other across but 12 un-
bridgeable miles, it IS a journey of 214 miles by car from one to
the other. Nor can you visit the North Rim in any but the
summer season; some 1,200 feet higher than the South Rim, it
has a delightful climate in July and August under the shade of
aspen, spruce and fir, but is wnter-bound with ten to fifteen
feet of snow much of the year.

But there is no day in the year that you may not visit the
South Rim, and find the sun warm upon the cheek, the air like
dry wine, perfumed with the inceiise of pinon smoke from a
Hopi Indian hearth. Here in a few paces you may step forth
from the confines of your everyday life and face the fact of the
Canyon - the grandest and most boldly stated fact on earth. As
down and down through rock of ages the river has cut, it has
revealed to us how life comes up and up And through the
beholder surges a sense of the power of the divine will The
Grand Canyon is a sight Avith the impact of revelation I came
here an atheist, said philosopher Hendnk van Loon, and departed a
devout believer

Condensed from Holiday

PHIL STONG

There was a tune ^vhen ‘going to the Fair’ meant a night
journey in a truck wth all the family and with a hog or a
blue-blooded bull or a few sho%\ -worthy, bad-tcmpcrcd fo\\ls
crated up beside the baskets ofqmnccjell> and angel-food cake
which made up the womenfolk’s stake m the Fair. You
pretended to be asleep in spite of the jolting, but all the time
you had your eyes fixed on the sky ahead for the first light from
the fair-grounds Ofcourse>ou did fall asleep at last; and when
you woke up there was the Fair, and the camp-ground ■waiting
for \ou.

TTiat is one way to go - and perhaps the best wav. But there
are other good wavs, by tram or bus, and b) big saloons
(76,000 cars were parked at the Iowa State Fair last \car)
and even by planes flashing along from all the spolcs of the
compass towards the fair-grounds For one week in August each
7 ear since 1854 (except for the interruption of war) the State
Fair has been the capital of Amcnca’s Com Belt, the site
of the greatest food festival in the world Last vear it was
celebrated by more than half a million people through
whose efforts most of America - and a good deal of Europe -
cats.

The glow from the Fair warms the returning native long
before it can be seen. He can feci it in the club car running
wcstisard out of Chicago. The car is full of other pilgnms to tlic

FinJ in r« tn 1?4S

reader’s Digest omnibus

336

Fair. Not the fanners, who have created the Fair and to whom
it belongs, but visitors and acolytes from outside who assist
at the ceremonies m every way, from setting up radio stations or
selling cotton candy or guessing people’s weight to looking over
the stock exhibits for the Department of Agnculture or making
a survey of Four-H Clubs for the Farm Bureau. There -will be a
sprinkling, too, of research men from the eastern agncultural
colleges.

The porter, who has travelled this road for years with State
Fair passengers, knows when to turn the radio on, and at the
first words from the loudspeaker every head m the car goes
up. ‘Temperature 102. Tomorrow and Wednesday, fair and
warmer.’ Everybody grins. Good Fair weather.

Nobody knov/s why the Fair does its best business in a
temperature just under boding. But a comfortably cool grey
day cuts the box-office receipts in half. Without the sun, lowans
just won’t make merry.

There are 378 acres of grounds -full of stock pavilions,
exhibition and industrial buildings, small concessions, the
grandstand and the Midway -four million dollars’ worth of
permanent installations The judging of livestock begins at
8 a.m , there are harness and running races and rodeos all
afternoon, and at mght there is a' big show at the grandstand,
wth fireworks till 11 One has to keep moving not to miss
anythmg; and one has to eat every two or three hours to combat
exhaustion.

An English photographer sent by a New York magazine to
cover the Fair in 1946 spent Fair Week in a daze. So many
acres of shiny parked automobiles. Farmers buying Piper Cubs
and hehcopters. ‘But where are the wagons and bicycles?’ he
asked. ‘And why are all these city people here?’ They were not
city people, but plain farmers, sohd, prosperous, well dressed.

Though the Fair is strictly a family outing, the family
separates after breakfast. The men and the youngsters flock
to the livestock bams - except for those who already are
installed there, sleeping in the upstairs dormitories or on a cot
alongside Blue Boy or Lord Lard, or Jersey Jimo who won the
blue ribbon last year for milk production. If a family member
IS showing any of these lordly creatures he will be busy all day.

Swine and sheep and cattle and horses have to be cumed,

STATE FAIR

337

fed, \\-atered, cheered up and, above all, kept cool. The stock
pavilions are the most carefully designed. sohdK built and best
ventilated of all the Fair bmldings. They house tenants \\hc«c
value runs into so many imlhons that c\cn the State Fair
publicity office hesitates to estimate it. *Nobod\ -would believe
us,’ they say. These pedigreed animals arc delicate and ncr\ ous.
It IS not unusual to see a pretty girl sponging the face of a mean-
looking buU, while her own face streams sweat that she doesn't
bother to wipe aw’ay.

The stock people will not soon forget the £^ 1^00 Berkshire
boar that m 1947 minced daintily around the judging nng,
acquired lus blue nbbon, cake-w’alkcd back to his stall and lav
down dead.

The senous-mmded, college-educated younger generation of
farmers w’ho come in such numbers arc seldom seen in the
grandstand or on the Midway, congregate in the stock-show
buildings and before the industrial exhibits A new machine
may affect tlie working hours and the production of millions
of farmers throughout the whole Missoun Vallc>. Scientific
mastodons like the combine, the hay baler and the corn picker
have revolutionised farm life; even a minor gadget like the
gimlet post-hole digger has saved untold mamhours m the few
jears since it was introduced at the Iowa State Fair.

These machines are what the men look at And these arc the
beneficent robots that may save the world b\ feeding it The
women at the Fair, also, arc bent on feeding the world, or
their section of it. They find ample excitement in the IVoincn’s
and Children’s Building, whidi houses home economics and
hobby exhibits, a recreational centre, bab\ -health contests and
a day nursery'.

Here one learns the newest magic of pressure cookery and
home freezing and vitamin juggling. A male intruder, escaping
the hissing pressure cookers, may blunder into a room full of
gargantuan, hostile infants competing for the bab> -health
prizes. Fleeing these, he can hardly avoid a fariiion show,
or a concert of musicians who call themselves the Mother
Singers If he dashes across the hall he is likclv to step Into a rapt
circle of females staring at a woman on the platform who is
making a Flower Arrangement out of two golden glows and a
stalk of Jimson weed. Or he may burst into the auditorium just

338 reader’s digest omnibus

in time to see a herd of tunicked ladies doing a determined folk
dance.

Outside, the bands play, the midget railway tram careens
round the park, and now that the judging of livestock and
jams and pickles is over for the day everybody is heading for
the grandstand to see the vaudeville, and the horse and auto
races, which are lOo per cent moral because betting is not
allowed.

By half-past five, ^vith nothing to stick to one’s ribs since
lunch but seven hot dogs, four hamburgers, a cubic foot of
cotton candy, three sacks of popcorn and assorted pops, colas
and ades, one is beginmng to look forward to the baked hickory-
smoked ham or the fhed chicken, mashed potatoes and pie a la
mode that even now are being served in the dining halls and
tents dotted about the fair-grounds.

By half-past six the girls from the Four-H dormitories are
coming out in pink and yellow dresses, after a long day in jeans;
the Four-H boys and their Des Moines cousins are sauntering
around in clean white flannels, looking sidewise at the girls;
and even the women who have flower-arranged and mother-
sung and pressure-cooked aU day are weanng thm, pale dresses
and silly hats over their pink plump faces, and showing a
tendency to giggle.

The Midway is always the same, and always new. Dwarfs,
giants, tattooed men, hairy apes are here. Old Fair-goers would
be grieved and disappointed if any of the^ traditional shows
were missing. If the prizes at the rifle gallenes and the hoop-
throwing stands were anythmg but hideous and useless, that
would be unfitting too.

The barkers have changed somewhat; the words and the
sleekness are the same, but their voices are lower now and
smoother. They have learned from Frank Sinatra. Either you
come in and see Zotz, the \\Tiat-is-it, or you feel you have
broken a nice boy’s heart.

The girl shows are right and proper, too, though grass skirts
and bras and sequined panties may be scantier than ever and
the motions of the dance less inhibited.

A new girl show appeared on the Midway in 1947 - just one
girl. People saw and stopped before the pitch of Sally Rand, and
at a rate of 10,000 every evening they bought tickets and went

STATE FAIR

339

in to see her. The dance is beautiful, and Sally herself, only a
lovely clean-cut face abo\ e the slo^^l^ -mo\-ing ostrich plumes, is
a neu kind of State Fair enchantress Even the i\omen like her.
‘She looks like such a nice girl,’ they said Matrons i\ho expected
to drag Father a\\ay from her in time for the fireworks have to
be dragged themselves

Fireuorks conclude the show. Tuo ^ears ago they displayed
Bikini under the atom bomb. Outlined in lights, the tiny
Pacific island rocked, quivered, exploded and burned under its
mushroom of coloured smoke.

.\t last the croud begins to pick up handbags and slip tired
feet back into cast-oflf shoes. But the p^gmy man is speakmg
again into his amplifier.

‘Folks, Criends, please -a moment. Before we disperse from
this glonous celebration, one small request. Will you all, each
of you, fish in your pockets and your purses for a match, a
cigarette fighter. ^Vait \\’hen the band blows one resounding
note, fight up. Send forth a litde candle in a naughty world.’

The response is umversal. Men dig match books from their
pockets, hand some to women who do not smoke. Then a
tremendous squawk of vanous instruments, and from one end
of the long grandstand to the other tiny fights spring out,
pin-pointed like a quilt of luminous stitches Under the roof,
people are lisible as in daylight And they sigh, from 30,000
throats

The Fair, breaking up for the night, flows in two directions
The larger current moves towards the parking field and the
street-car lines For 5,000 lowans, however, there is a shorter,
happier path to bed If you are one of these, you turn left when
you lea% e the grandstand and w’alk past the Midway and the
Old Mill and the roller coaster; past the shuttered dining halls
and the lemonade stands.

Your path climbs a dark hillside, past the glimmer of
nineteenth-centun' white gingerbread outlining the old Exposi-
tion Building Tliat is the building \ou always see in your mind’s
eye when you think of the Fair. It has alwa^'s been there since
you saw it first from your father’s shoulder. You hope it alwa)'s
will be.

The sleeps guard at the entrance to the camp-ground nods at
you and turns his stile, and \ou are almost home. This is the

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340

unchanging Fair. That was a good tent site that Grandfather
staked out in 1892, near the top of the hill where the breeze
could reach it under fine shade trees, and near the spring. The
spring has not been so important these 40 years since they built
the bath-houses and put in faucets everywhere. But it still flows
and its water will make the best boiled coffee in the world
tomorrow mom.

THE SIZE OF LIVING THINGS

Excerpts from The Atlantic Monthly
JULIAN S. HUXLEY

Size, which we are so apt to take for granted in ourselves and
m the orgamsms about us, is one* of the most serious problems
with which evolving life has had to cope.

The largest organisms are vegetables, the big trees of Gah-
fomia, -with a weight of nearly 1,000 tons. The largest animals
are whales, some of which considerably exceed 100 tons m
weight. They are not only the largest existing animals, but by
far the largest which have ever existed, for the monstrous reptiles
of the secondary period, which are often supposed to hold the
palm for size, could none of them have exceeded about 50 tons.

The largest invertebrates are to be found among the molluscs ;
some of the giant squids weigh two or three tons. The mnner-up
among the invertebrates is, strangely enough, a certain huge
jellyfish \vith a disc over seven feet across and 18 inches thick
and great bulky tentacles five feet long hanging doivn below.
One of these weighs as much as a good-sized horse. "What we
might call the most successful of all invertebrates, the ants,
never reach more than one gram m weight. The largest ant
colonies known possess a imlhon or so inhabitants. This whole
population would weigh about as much as one large man.
Indeed, the small size of most insects is at first hearing barely
credible. If you bought an oimce of fleas, you would have the
pleasure of receivmg over 80,000 of them!

Ftrsi published %n 'The Head^s Digesff tn 1930

THE SIZE OF LIVIXG THISGS 34I

Nature seems to have found it unprofitable to construct a
vertebrate out of less than several himdred million cells. Within
the groups there is great variation. It is a surprise, for instance,
to find a frog that eighs as much as a fox temer. It is a still
greater surprise to know that there exist fully formed adult
insects -a beetle or two, and several wasp-hke creatures -of
smaller bulk than the human ovum and yet with compound
eyes, a nice nervous s^'stem, three pairs of jaws and three pairs
of legs, veined w-ings, striped muscles, and the rest* It is rather
unexpected that the smallest adult vertebrate is not a fish, but a
frog; and it is most unexpected to find that the lai^est elephant
would have ample clearance top and bottom inside a large
whale’s skm.

The great bulk of land vertebrates range firom ten grams to
100 kilograms in w'eight. IVhy is this narrow range so
popular?

A disadvantage in being very small is that you are not big
enough to be out of reach of annoyance by the mere inorganic
molecules of the emironment. The molecules of a fluid like
water are rushing about in all direebons They run against any
object in the w'ater, and bounce off again W’hcn the surface of
the object is big enough for there to be thousands of such colli>
sions every’ second, the laws of probability wall see to it that the
number of bumps on one side will be closely equal to that on
the other, the steady average resulting w’e call fluid pressure
But when the diameter of the object falls to about one-thousandth
of a millimetre, it may easily happen that one side receives a
rain of bumps while the other is spared. The result is that the
smallest organisms are kept in a constant St Vitus’s dance,
christened Brownian movement after its discoverer

It is impossible, however, simply to magnify an object without
changing its shape - if you do so, without meaning to, you have
changed all its properties. For the surface increases as the square
of the diameter, the volume as its cube. And so the amount of
surface relative to bulk must diminish with size. A big Afncan
elephant is one million times as hea\y as a small mouse But the
amount of surface for each gramme of elephant is only one-
hundredth of W’hat it is in the mouse.

The most faimliar effect of this surface-volume relation is on
the rate of falling. The greater the amount of surface exposed

M

reader’s digest omnibus

342

relative to weight, the greater the resistance of the air. If a
mouse is dropped down the shaft of a coal-mine, the accelera-
tion due to gravity soon comes up against the retardation due to
air resistance, and after 100 feet or so a steady rate is reached,
which permits it to reach the bottom dazed but unhurt, how-
ever deep the shaft. A cat, on the other hand, is killed, a man
is not only killed, but horribly mangled; and if a pit pony falls
over, the speed at the bottom is so appalling that the body
makes a hole in the ground, and is so thoroughly smashed that
nothing remains save a few fragments of the bones and a splash
on the walls.

Relative surface is also important for temperature regulation
in warm-blooded animals; for the escape of heat must be pro-
portional to the surface, through which it leaks away. As heat is
derived from the combustion of the food, a mouse must eat much
more m proportion to its weight than a man to make up for its
unavoidable extra heat loss. The reason that children need
proportionately more food than growm-ups is not only due to
the fact that they are growing, but also to the fact that their heat
loss is relatively greater. A baby of a year loses more than twice
as much heat for each pound of its weight than does a 12-stone
man. For this reason, it is doubtful whether the attempt should
be made to harden children by letting them go about ivith bare
legs in wnter; their heat requirements are greater than their
parents’, not less.

The big animal inevitably fails to be a mere scale enlarge-
ment of its smaller relative. Everyone knows the small-eyed
look of an elephant or of a whale. To obtain a good image, an
eye has to be a certain absolute size; and once this size is reached,
any advantage due to further enlargement is more than counter-
balanced by the difficulties of construction, just as very little
advantage is to be gained in photography by making a camera
over full plate size. .

We come back to the advantages and disadvantages of size.
At the outset, it is not until living units are quit of the frenzy of
Brownian movement that they themselves become capable of
regulated locomotion. The first step in size is to become so much
bigger than ordinary molecules that you can forget about them.

But even then you are microscopic. Only by joining together
tens or hundreds of thousands of cells can you make headway

THE SIZE or LIVING THINGS

343

against such brute forces as currents. Size also brings speed and
power, and this is an advantage in explonng the environment
"When we get to whole grams, however, wnged life at least
has the world before it. Many migratory birds that rcgularl)
travel thousands of miles weigh less than ten grams Swimming
soon follow's suit; think of the migration of tiny eels across the
Atlantic, or of baby salmon down great rivers.

Before a real brain can be constructed, the ammal must
consist of tens of thousands of cells The mtelligence of a rat
would be impossible without brain cells enough to outweigh the
w’hole body of a bee, while the brain of a human being outweighs
the very great majority of existing whole animals
Man, m fact, is a very large orgamsm. Dunng his individual
existence he multiplies his ongmal weight a thousand million,
and comes to contain about a hundred million million cells. He
is a little more than half-way up the size-scale of mammals, and
nearly two-thirds up that of the vertebrates

Sir C. Aubrey Smith, grand old gentleman of stage and
screen, hked to dine quietly. Consequently he was rather
put out when, in a Hollywood restaurant, he happened to
be seated near a noisy diner who kept yelhng for the waiter.
‘^\Tiat do you have to do,’ demanded the pest finally, ‘to
get a glass of water m this dump^’

The sedate Sir Aubrey turned to the noisy one and
qmetly said" ‘^\^ly don’t you try setting yours^ on fire?’

* A ¥

Dr Alfred Adler, the psychiatrist, was lectunng on the
theorj' that people "with handicaps often specialize on their
handicapped functions. Thus, short-winded boys tend to
train themselves mto being distance runners, people with
w'eak eyes tend to become painters, and so forth Adler
finished his exposition and asked for questions
Immediately this one ivas pitched at him from the back
of the auditorium ‘Dr Adler, wouldn’t your theory mean
that weak-minded people tend to become psychiatnsts?’

MOTHERS OF THE WILD

Condensed from Field & Stream
ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE

/

"Whenever the Santee River, beside my South Carolina
plantation, goes into flood, I spend much time on its waters
gettmg my livestock and game out of danger. On one such
expedition I wtnessed the heroic behaviour of the finest - and
the ughest - ^vildemess mother I have ever seen.

She was a -wild razor-back hog. Built like a huge hyena, with
a long, sharp snout, she looked fierce indeed. \Vhen I sighted
her from my canoe she was marooned upon a big log wedged
into the crotch of a water oak, and huddled up to her flank were
nine little ones. The savage old creature knew well that the log
would soon be swept away by the fast-rismg water. She could
easily have saved herself— wild razor-backs can swim miles -but
she would not leave her babies to pensh.

Half a mile across the water stood a piece of high ground. She
looked at it, as if appraismg the peril mcurred m swimming to'
it. Her decision made, she grunted assurance to her precious
pigs and tenderly nuzzled them mto a huddle on the log. Next
she plunged in, swam around to show her babies how easily
it was done, and'chmbed back on the log. Again grunting
motherly counsel, she cautiously herded them into the water.

First published in *The Readers DigesV in 1941

L

344

MOTHERS or THE WILD

345

Then, making sure all were with her, she swam slowly to the
ridge, keeping the tiny pigs m the lee of her great flank to break
the force of the current for them It w as beautiful to watch that
gnm old monster mothering her babies across the threatening
tide to safety. '

In the depths of a nver swamp I came across a baby squirrd,
on the limb of a redbud maple, munching a supper of tender
buds. This adventurous elf was about 30 feet from the den-tree,
from which I could hear his mother talking to him Suddenly,
from a c^Tiress nearby, a barred owl launched himself toivards
the little squirrel The mother ga\e a sharp bark of alarm, in a
split second the infant dropped undemeatiti the hmb and hung
like the man on the fljTng trapeze As he executed this amazmg
manoemTe, the owl shot over the spot where his prey had been.
By the time it could turn, the youngster had scampered hke
lightning for home. His mother’s vigilance had saved his life.

On another occasion I saw a mother squirrel leap from a high
tree to one nearby and w’ait for her baby to follow. Coming to
the take-off, the httle fellow' hesitated - that gulf looked so
wide' Then he manfully gathered himself up, jumped, and
landed in a smother of leaves on the end of a hmb In a flash the
mother ran out and clasped her arms about him, sawng him
from a fall as he struggled for a foothold after his Homeric
flight

Everyone knows that feline wild mothers w*!!! pick up their
young and mo\e them away from harm. But I have seen a bird
do the same thmg I had discovered a woodcock’s nest and every
day, from a distance, I w'atched the mother as she sat on her
five eggs, ^\^len her babies hatched they were funny httle buff-
feathered balls with long bills and solemn black eyes, looking as
wise and mirthless as judges. As I approached the nest one
mormng the mother took alarm, grasped one of her babies
firmly between her thighs and flew wTth it far out of sight, I
watched her transport her entire brood that way.

Male creatures of the wild spend their time m hunting,
fightmg and idhng. It is their mdustrious and unselfish mates
who teach the young the instant obedience necessary for
survival.-

One Jime day while crossing an old pasture I heard a mother
quail give a caU of alarm. Soon I saw her trj'mg to attract my

reader’s digest omnibus

346

attention and lure me away by pretending to be wounded.
Then I spied her wee, day-old chicks. They were obeying their
mother’s continued warnings to the best of their ability Every
one was valiantly trying to conceal himself. Some crouched
beneath clumps of daisies; two sat conucally in the grass on
their little fantails, bright-eyed, unblinking, and still as stones
I picked one up; settling down tightly, he did his best to hide in
my hand. For 12 minutes by my watch the mother never
ceased her broadcast, and not a baby stirred. Then, not
wantmg to alarm the httle family any longer, I walked on, but
I’m sure their obedience would have lasted indefimtely.

One morning I startled a whitetail doe out of a thicket. I
stopped and she neither saw nor wmded me. She stood tremu-
lous wth apprehension, for her tiny fawn was with her, swaying
unsteadily on his slender legs. She knew one of the best means
of concealment is to remain motionless, but her fawn had not
learned this. He kept frohcking about her until she set a delicate
forefoot firmly on his back and pressed him down in the grass as
if saying, ‘Baby, you must lie still until I find out if there’s any
danger.’

The first month wild turkeys are hatched they cannot fly,
and the turkey mother stays with them on the ground. All day
long she watchfully leads her brood through the forest, occasion-
ally standing statue-hke, a lovely and tireless sentinel alert for
fox, ivildcat or weasel, while the young scurry about for food.

I came upon such a family at dusk one May evening.
Approaching a sweet gum tree, I heard a quaint elfin piping -
the dulcet, appealing babble of baby turkeys. Crawhng nearer,
I found the mother givmg her httle ones their first lesson m tree
roosting. She and three of her young were still on the ground;
the rest had taken roost, but some were on a limb only three
feet off the ground, while one fledghng perched teeteringly on
a small bush nearby. The httle birds, uneasy on their perches,
looked down questioningly and complained in sweet trebles, and
one unsteady httle fellow flopped back to earth. The mother
admonished the weak ones, then flew up to a low limb and gave
a reassuring call. One of those on the ground fluttered to the
top of a bush and thence "winged his way to his mother’s perch.
The others managed a flight of some seven feet

All the 17 babies were now on the limb with their mother.

THE BEST INVESTMENT 1 EVER MADE 347

Each tried to huddle dose to her. Then followed an act of
touching beauty The ttildemess mother extended her tvmgs as
far as she could, so that under their maternal spread everj' one
of her babies might find protection and comfort. And I thought:
here is the t\’ild heart of the wastelands, biimmmg \\ith mother
love. All the dangers of the mght are facing her babies. First she
patiently gets them out of range of the perils on the ground.
Then, because all cannot huddle dose to her warm breast,
she stretches over them her tireless tt-mgs for a shidd and a
shdter.

If you draw aside the filmy ved separating human from animal
life, you t%Tll often come upon scenes of pathos, valour and
beaut)'. But the most thnllmg by far are the unselfish acts of
devotion of the mothers of the tvild.

THE BEST INVESTMENT
I EVER MADE

A. J. CRONIN

On the second day out from New York, while making the
round of the promenade deck, I suddenly became aware that
one of the other passengers was watching me closely, following
me ■with his gaze ever)' time I passed, his eyes filled mth a
queer, almost pathetic intensity.

I ha\ e crossed the Adannc many times. And on this occasion,
tired after a prolonged piece of work, I wanted to rest, to avoid
the tedium of casual and importunate shipboard contacts. I
gave no sign of hav'ing noticed the man

Yet there u'as nothmg importunate about him. On the
contrary, he seemed affected by a troubled, rather touching
diffidence. He was in his early 40’s, I judged - out of the comer
of my eye - rather short in bmld. with a fair complexion, a good
forehead from which his thm hair had begun to recede, and
dear blue eyes His dark suit, sober tie and nmless spectacles
gave ev'idence of a serious and reserved disposition.

At this point the bugle sounded for dinner and I went below .

Ftni published tn The Fesder^s IhgesT tn 1951

348 reader’s digest omnibds

On the following forenoon, I again observed my fellow voyager
watching me earnestly from his deck-chair.

Now a lady was with him, obviously his wife. She wzis about
his age, quiet and restrained, with brown eyes and shghtly faded
brown hair, dressed in a grey skirt and grey woollen cardigan.

The situation by this time had begun to intrigue me and
from my steward I discovered that they were Mr and Mrs
John S — , from a small suburb of London. Yet when another
day passed ^vithout event, I began to feel certain that ^-Ir S —
would remain too shy to carry out his obvious desire to approach
me. However, on our final evemng at sea, Mrs S — decided
the matter. "With a firm pressure on his arm and a whispered
word in his ear, she urged her husband towards me as I passed
along the deck.

‘Excuse me, Doctor. I wonder if I might introduce myself.’
He spoke almost breathlessly, offering me the visiting card
which he held in his hand and studying my face to see if the
name meant anything to me. Then, as it plainly did not, he
went on ivith the same awkwardness. ‘If you could spare a few
minutes . . . my wife and I would so like to have a word with
you.’

A moment later I was occupying the vacant chair beside
them. Haltingly he told me that this had been their first \'isit to
America. It was not entirely a hohday trip They had been
making a tour of the New England states, inspecting many of
the summer recreational camps provided for young people there.
Afterwards, they had visited settlement houses m New York
and other cities to study the methods employed in dealing with
youth groups, especially backward, maladjusted and dehnquent
cases.

There was in his voice and manner, indeed in his whole
personality, a genuine enthusiasm which was disarming. I found
myself liHng him instinctively. Questioning him further, I
learned that he and his ivife had been active for the past 15
years in the field of youth welfare. He was, by profession, a
solicitor but, m addition to his practice, found time to act as
director of a charitable organisation devoted to the care of boys
and girls, mostly from city slums, who had fallen foul of the
law.

As he spoke with real feeling, I got a vivid picture of the work

THE BEST INVESTMENT I EVER MADE

349

which these two people were doing -hois they took derelict
adolescents from the juvemle courts and. plaang them in a
healthy environment, healed them in mmd and body, sent them
back into the isorld, trained m a useful handicraft and fit to
take their places as isorthy members of the community-.

It was a isork of redemption which stirred the heart and I
asked what had directed his life into this channel. The question
had a strange effect upon him; he took a sharp breath and
exclaimed:

‘So you still do not remember m^’

I shook my head, to the best of my behef 1 had never in my
hfe seen him before

‘I've wanted to get m touch wath you for man) )ears,’ he
went on, under increasing stress. ‘But I was never able to biing
myself to do so.’ Then, bending near, he spoke a few w ords,
tensely, in my ear. At that, slow 1) , the veils parted, my thoughts
sped back a quarter of a centuiy and, with a start, I remembered
the sole occasion when I had seen this man before.

I w’as a young doctor at the time and had just set up in
practice in a workmg-class district of London. On a foggy
November night, towards one o’clock, I was awakened by a
loud ban^g at the door. In those days of econormc necessity
any call, even at this unearthly hour, was a welcome one.
Hurriedly, I threw' on some clothes, went downstairs. It was a
sergeant ofpohee, m dripping helmet and cape, mistily outlined
on the doorstep. A suicide case, he told me abruptly, m the
lodgings round the comer - 1 had better come at once

Outside it w'as raw' and damp, the trafSc stilled, the street
deserted, quiet as the tomb ^Ve walked the short distance in
silence, even our footsteps muffled by the fog, and turned into
the narrow’ entrance of an old building.

As we mounted the creaking staircase, my nostrils were stung
by the sick-sweet odour of gas. On the upper storey the agitated
landlady showed us to a bare litde attic w'here, stretched on a
narrow' bed, lay the body of a )oung man.

Although apparently lifeless, there remained the barest chance
that the youth was not quite beyond recall. IVith the sergeant’s
help, I began the work of resuscitation. For an entire hour w’e
laboured without success A further 15 mmutes and, despite our
most strenuous exertions, it appeared useless. Then, as we were

reader’s digest omnibus

350

about to give up, completely exhausted, there broke from the
patient a shallow, convulsive gasp. It was like a resurrection
from the grave, a imracle, this stirring of life under our hands.
Half an hour of redoubled efforts and we had the youth sitting
up, gazing at us dazedly and, alas, slowly realising the horror of
his situation.

He was a round-cheeked lad, with a simple, countrified air,
and the story that he told us, as he slowly regained strength m
the bleak mormng hours, was simple, too. His parents were
dead. An uncle m the provinces, anxious, no doubt, to be rid of
an unwanted responsibility, had found him a position as clerk
in a London solicitor’s office. He had been in the city only six
months. Utterly friendless, he had fallen victim to the loose
society of the streets, had made bad companions, and like a
young fool, eager to taste pleasures far beyond his means, had
begun to bet on horses. Soon he had lost all his small savings,
had pledged his belongings, and owed the bookmaker a disastrous
amount. In an effort to recoup, he had taken a sum of money
from the office safe for a final gamble which, he was assured,
was certain to win. But this last resort had failed. Terrified of
the prosecution which must follow, sick at heart, sunk in despair,
he had shut himself in his room and turned on the gas.

A long bar of silence throbbed in the httle attic when he
concluded this halting confession. Then, gruffly, the sergeant
asked how much he had stolen. Pitifully, almost, the answer
came, seven pounds ten shillings. Yes, incredible though it
seemed, for this paltry sum this poor misguided lad had almost
thrown away his hfe.

Again there came a pause in which, plainly, the same un-
spoken thought was uppermost in the minds of the three of us
who were the sole witnesses of this near-tragedy Almost of one
accord, we voiced our desire to give the youth - whose defence-
less nature rather than any vicious tendencies had brought him
to this extremity - a fresh start. The sergeant, at considerable
risk to his job, resolved to make no report upon the case, so that
no court proceedings would result. The landlady offered a
month’s free board until he should get upon his feet again.
AMiile I, making perhaps the least contribution, came forward
with seven pounds ten shilhngs for him to put back in the office
safe.

THE HORSE THAT WENT OX A HOLIDAY 35 I

The ship moved on through the still darkness of the night.
There \%as no need of spCech. With a tender gesture Mrs S —
had taken her husband’s hand And as we sat in silence, heanng
the sounding of the sea and the sighing of the breeze, a singular
emotion overcame me I could not but reflect that, against all
the bad investments I had made throughout the years - those
foolish speculations for material gam, producing only anxiety,
disappomtment and frustration — here at last was one I need
not regret, one that had paid no divndends in worldly goods,
yet which might stand, nev'ertheless, on the profit side, in the
final reckoning.

THE HORSE THAT \VENT
ON A HOLIDAY

Condensed from Le Pairiole Ulustre

FREDERIC SONDERN, JR.

F OR years Herluf Petersen and Sandy Mac with their big dray
have been an institution in Copenhagen Herr Petersen is a
quiet, spectacled man who through four decades has made
deliveries for the venerable firm of Vilh. Chnsdansen, ^Vines
and Spirits Sandy Mac, named after the Scotch whisk)% is a
great black Oldenburger geldmg, as gentle and dignified as his
master.

As they make their daily round through the streets of the old
Danish capital, Herr Petersen in his leather wine-drover's apron
and Sandy Mac in his glistening harness nod - each in his own
■way -a decorous good-day to familiar tradesmen, tavern-
keepers and poheemen. The horse obnously disapproves of
motor cars, but should one get in his way he shows his contempt
with no more than an annoyed snort and a hard stare. His
master does the same.

Only once has Copenhagen seen Sandy Mac lose his temper.
It v\ as durmg a street battle between Danish pohee and German
troops occup^mg the city m 1944. WTule bullets whined around

Ftrs! tK FtaJer s DtsesT tr 1951

reader’s digest omnibus

352

him, the big horse stood still for several minutes in front of a
wineshop where the equally imperturbable Herr Petersen was
making a delivery.

Suddenly Sandy Mac decided that he had had enough. With
a mighty lunge he started the heavily laden dray rolling towards
the thick of the firing. Gathering momentum, he broke into a
gallop and, head do\vn, charged the German soldiery. The
Wehrmacht gaped and scattered in panic as the equine tank
thundered by. Sandy Mac then slowed down and, wthout a
backward glance, walked majestically off to his stable.

Sandy Mac’s attack on the German Army is an oft-told tale
in Copenhagen, but he was to become even more famous. Two
years ago Herr Petersen presented himself at the sedate
counting-house of Vilh. Christiansen with a startling request.
He was about to go on his annual hohday and would like to
take Sandy Mac with him to the seashore.

‘He is getting on in years, sir,’ explained Herr Petersen, ‘just
turning 14. He is tired and nervous. He has worked hard and
wllingly, and deserves a holiday like any other employee.
Never been out of the city since he was bom. He’d enjoy the
ocean, I think.’

Such a thing was unheard of. But Herr Petersen’s arguments
were compelhng. Sandy Mac was indeed a member of the staff
of Christiansen, the partners decided, and as such was entitled
to a holiday.

On a bright summer morning Herr Petersen and Sandy Mac
set out. As always, the big animal started off with prancmg step,
his head high. But this was none of the usual routes. It was an
unknown, uncrowded road, and there were many trees. Herr
Petersen’s gnp on the reins was loose and he was singing.
Fmally the horse stopped and turned his head.

‘We’re going on a hohday,’ Herr Petersen told him. ‘To
Koge, where you can mn around m a field and swim in the
ocean ’ Sandy Mac twitched his ears, tossed his head and started
off again.

In a field close to the inn where he was to stay, Herr Petersen
unhitched. Free of harness, the whole meadow in front of him,
Sandy Mac gazed aroimd, looked at his master, and then just
stood there.

‘Go on,’ said Herr Petersen. ‘Run. Enjoy yourself.’ •

THE HORSE THAT WENT ON A HOLIDAY 353

The horse tried a few tentative steps on the spring)' turf; he
knew only city pavement He trotted for a bit, Aen stopped to
thmk It over. Suddenly, tvith a wld neigh, he flung up his hind
legs and galloped madly off. Round and round m crazy circles
he raced, lacking and bucking as he went "WTien Herr Petersen
left, Sandy Mac was cautiously mbbimg at a patch of thick grass

Early next mormng Sandy Mac was standmg by the gate of
liis pasture gazing disconsolately down the road The horse,
accustomed to a comfortable stable m the city, had cwdently
not found a mght m the open to his hking He accepted his
breakfast of oats ivithout enthusiasm, and was still grumpy
when his master started oflT wth him

Sandy Mac has an insatiable cunosity, however, and was
soon engrossed in his surroundings. ^Valkmg along behind Herr
Petersen, he inspected everything strange m dehberate fashion
Wild flowers were sniffed and nibbled Cows, sheep and pigs
were subjected to searching observation.

‘He would stand there and stare,’ said Herr Petersen, ‘then
he’d look at me, shake lus head, and snort He has vanous kmds
of snorts and I can tell pretty well what he thinks.’

Chickens fesemated him, and he would follow one around the
farmyard to see %vhat it did. Geese terrified him He had leaned
doivn to inspect one and been rewarded with a sharp blow on
the nose, then the whole flock advanced on him, pimons
flapping, beady eyes glittenng. Sandy Mac reared in fnght and
took off Herr Petersen found him fEU" doivn the road, still
shaking

To farm horses Sandy Mac was courteous enough, but he
obviously regarded them as an entirely different class from
himself.

*I think he found them a bit uncouth’ Herr Petersen
observed. ‘He’s very fussy about his own grooming and he’s
somewhat of a snob.’

Sandy Mac's greatest tnal, however, was the ocean. The dry
sand felt soft and treacherous, the wet sand was cold. Nothing
that Herr Petersen tned could tempt him to put even one foot
mto the water. He was unhappy when Herr Petersen himself
Avent in, walked nervously back and forth, and kept his eyes on
his master. iNTien Herr Petersen turned over to float on his
back, the horse gave a temfied whinny and plunged after his

reader’s digest omnibus

354

apparently drowning friend. As Herr Petersen stood up in the
shallow water, the horse came to an abrupt stop, looked
mortified, and made for the security of the shore.

On the way out, however, he discovered that it was fun to
splash, and soon was racing up ‘and down in the shallows,
sending up great sheets of water and neighing with delight
After that Herr Petersen always had difficulty getting him home.

The holiday fortnight passed. On their way back to the city
Herr Petersen noticed that, while there was much more power
to Sandy Mac’s pull, he dawdled and wandered all over the
road. As the familiar landmarks of Copenhagen appeared, and
the gravel road changed to macadam, the horse showed
nervousness.

Herr Petersen reined to a halt. ‘Holiday is over,’ he said
sharply. ‘You must walk properly. This is the city now. What
will people think?’

Sandy Mac turned his head, paused for a moment, then
gathered himself His neck arched, and looking straight ahead,
he clip-clopped through the streets with his high, elegant step.

‘He IS a city horse,’ Herr Petersen said. ‘He enjoyed his
holiday but he likes his job too.’

Word of Sandy Mac’s holiday got around the capital quickly.
One of the big Copenhagen restaurants gave a party to cele-
brate his return. Solemnly the press reported the story in
detail. HORSE enjoys holiday was one of the headlines.

The Danes were fascinated. Svalen, the Danish SPCA,
bought a pasture outside Copenhagen as a summer camp for
city cart horses and made Herr Petersen an honorary member
of Its society.

Firms all over the city applied to Svalen for holiday penods
for their horses The firm of Vilh. Christiansen announced that
henceforth Sandy Mac would go to the seashore for two weeks
every summer. There was even talk m the Diet of making
hohdays for horses compulsory by law.

Herr Petersen has had to tell the story of Sandy Mac’s
expenences at the seashore over and over agam m coffee-houses
and wineshops.

‘I don’t see anything so remarkable about it,’ he would
protest ‘Horses are people, in a way. And Sandy Mac happens
to be a very intelhgent horse.’

MY

MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER

MARC A. ROSE

John E. Baogett sent me a clipping from a Chicago ncivs-
paper a while ago, and a word of greeting. By long custom the
Item said, the teachers of the Lake Forest, Illinois, pubhc schools
had gathered to celebrate his birthday - the 79th There w’as a
picture of him. The party was held in the John E. Baggett
Auditorium in the Gorton School

I have seen that school, it is full of reproductions oftlic world’s
masterpieces of painting and sculpture, and it has a fine collec-
tion of recordings of the world’s great music. \Ir Baggett had
bought them all - over $9,000 ivorth - largely out of his school-
teacher’s pay. And I will venture that no child has left that
school in the past 35 years who could not identify c\er>‘ picture
and statue and piece of music. I wall likewise venture that e\ cry
child could wTite a good, plain hand and was soundl) grounded
in arithmetic and spellmg.

I know John E. Baggett did that much for all of us who sat
under his instruction 40-odd years ago That and so much more.
Many progressive ideas began m his schoolroom and later
spread from coast to coast He is a great teacher of w'hom it
might almost be said that he never went to school

John E. Baggett w'as bom in 1863 in Highland Park, 111 ,
on the w’est shore of Lake Michigan His father earned a living
cutting w'ood to be hauled to Chicago, 20-odd miles aw'ay.
^\Tien John w'as ii months old his mother died and he w'as be-
queathed to a childless neighbour, IMargaret Reid. Her husband
W’as another w’oodcutter.

John Baggett w'as a quiet, rather sulky child. He w’as called
-Johnny Reid, ^\llen he was 12 his foster parents took him to an
low'a farm.

There w’as no place for the boy in the one-room cabin, so he
slept in the granary. He w'as unhappy. The Reids, dour folk

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355

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356

from the Orkneys, seemed harsh and cold to the httle Irish lad,
and Reid when drunk was mean.

The boy hated farm work and loved books. Reid had brought
a few volumes from the old country, one, Scottish Chiefs
all but learned by heart. He was fiercely set on learning. By
this time he w'as aware that he was a foster child, and found

consolation in telling himself he was of finer stuff than the Reids
and would rise above them.

He had to do his reading in the bam - the cracks stuffed wth
papers so no hght would show he was ‘wasting’^kerosene. He
got hold of books in one way and another and plugged at them
diligently, for now' he had an ambition, he would teach school.
One day when he w'as not quite 1 7 he was sent to town - Warren,
la. — -with a load of grziin. 'WTiile there he made inquiries and
learned that a school two miles from the Reid’s farm needed a
teacher. On the spot the boy took the examination and passed
brilliantly - aU but spelling. He had spelled the words correctly,
but in those days you were also required to divide them into
sj'llables; and John’s syllables were highly onginal. That w'as
because he had never seen a spelling book ‘Take this one,’ said
the examiner, ‘and come back w'hen you’re ready.’

Soon thereafter the lad w'as able to chop his words apart
neatly, and he w'as appointed to a Bremer County school at $24
a month. At the Reids’ there was a row', but the boy stuck firmly
to his plan. That fall he faced his first pupils, many of them older
and bigger than himself. But they took to him, he relates wdth
mild surprise in his voice, and he had no trouble.

MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER 357

That wnter, Reid, drunk, fell from a wagon and broke his
leg So John Baggett got up at five o’clock, did the chores at
home, walked two miles to school through snow and bitter cold,
made the fire there, taught all day, trudged home and did the
evening chores.

^NTien Reid was well again the young schoolteacher left the
farm, resuming his own name, Baggett, which he spelled by ear.
After teaching three terms in nearby counties, he went back to
the Ilhnois county where he was bom. There he passed - with
perfect marks - the examination for an elementar)' teacher’s
certificate.

The examiner had a vacancy for a good, strong man. The
boys had burned one teacher in efBgy and driven him away.

John Baggett taught in country schools for a few' years and
his local fame grew. In 1888 the nearby city of ^Vaukegan asked
him to become pnncipal of its North School.

There he taught the sixth, seventh and eighth grades - 70
pupils. In 1893, when the "World’s Fair was held in Chicago,
John Baggett took seven of his pupils to see its wonders on
each of ten successive Saturdays To keep them together in the
crow'ds he had them all hold on to a rope; he held the end

It w'as into John Baggett’s schoolroom in Waukegan that I
w’as taken one morning in mid-teim; it had been decided that I
could ‘skip a grade’ This w'as the first man teacher I had ever
faced and I was a little nervous as I studied him I saw a man of
medium height, thick black hair parted in the middle, snapping
blue eyes and a neat "Vandyke beard, black as ink. I had seen
few men so well tailored, brushed and shined except on Sunday.
Mr Baggett was always that way, it was part of what he taught
us, silently, that it wasn’t effeimnate to pay attention to such
things.

I looked around the room and caught my breath All the
schoolrooms I had ever seen were utterly bare, bleak and
brown, most of them in America then were. But this one was
different. The desk tops w'eren’t w'hittled, ink-stained and dingy,
they were enamelled ivory-white. So w'ere the doors and wood-
w'ork. The south ivindow's w'ere banked ivith ferns and potted
plants. All the window's had filmy curtains.

Nearly a hundred framed pictures hung on the sage-green
papered w'alls Clear around the room ran a border of

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358

photographs of the Acropolis, Notre Dame, the Bridge of
Sighs and other famous scenes. Below that border was a frieze
of portraits of famous men. Here and there were plaster casts of
fine pieces of sculpture, the firat I had ever seen. Pinned to the
door of the room were scores of newspaper clippings and
pictures from illustrated weeklies - fascinating pictures of
soldiers fighting under the palm trees of Cuba; warships of the
W^ite Squadron firing their guns at the ships of Spam. It was
all exciting and beautiful.

That very autumn John Baggett’s room was adjudged the most
attractive schoolroom in the United States, and photographs of
It were published in the Ladies' Home Journal, which \^fas then
crusading against the bleakness of American schools.

John Baggett had \vith his own hands scraped the 70 dingy
desks and enamelled them one summer. He had patiently col-
lected all the pictures - buying, begging, borrowing. Most of us
had little enough beauty m our homes, and to me and thousands
of other children John Baggett’s schoolroom was a first intro-
duction to the world of culture and good taste. Not that anything
was preached to us about art. We were simply told that these
were the world’s great pictures and statues, and that we ought
to know their names and the names of the artists, just as one
would know the names of great books and their authors. So we
learned to identify every masterpiece.

The door taught us ‘live history’, as Mr Baggett called it
Each day he tacked up chppings of the important news and
news pictures. Fascinated, we would crowd around the door
during recess or after school, reading the clippings, examining
the pictures, asking questions. There was an occzisional quiz,
and the boy or girl who gave the best answers was permitted to
clear off the door at the end of the month and keep the pictures
and clippings.

Often on Friday afternoons there was music. Mr Baggett
invited talented students from the Chicago Conservatory to
play or sing for us. Usually they would explain a little: ‘There
hves m Norway a man named Grieg who is ^v^iting very beautiful
new music. This is one of his pieces, m it you can imagine the
peasants dancing at a wedding.’

If there was a new thing in the world, we were likely to know
It soon. Mr Baggett somehow got hold of one of the first X-ray

MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER 35Q

photographs to reach this country - a hand, showng the bones
and a ring on one finger ^Ve were among the first persons m
the isorld to see motion pictures. The movie camera was bom
in Waukegan and, in ’98 or ’99, Mr Baggett persuaded the
inventor to set up a machine in our darkened schoolroom and
show us pictures of trains coming mto our railroad station and a
circus parade going down Genesee Street

In teaching the basic subjects,Mr Baggett was strict, thorough,
and something of an innovator He was perhaps the first to
compile a list of '200 words most often misspelled’, we w'cre
relentlessly drilled on them. He insisted upon good handwriting
He set great store by mental arithmetic and was always popping
such problems at you, unexpectedly Best kind of intelhgence
test, he still insists

Some afternoons there were cake sales for the pretended
purpose of raising a little money to buy pictures or new curtains.
The real motive, howev'er, was to get mothers to come and talk
to teachers Parent-teacher meetings hadn’t been invented.
Sometimes Benny Kubelsky would play his violin Benny’s father
always sent two dollars instead of a cake, which he didn’t have
to do since Benny went to South School, not ours But Abe
Kubebky always wanted to help - perhaps because Mr Baggett
encouraged Benny. Jack Benny, he is now

"We sang, of course. Nothing unusual about that But w'hen I
was a grown man at the Metropolitan Opera House one evening
I suddenly recognised something I used to sing* \Ve had been
taught choruses fi-om Faust, from CavalUna Rusticana, songs by
Mendelssohn and Schubert - not tinkly stuff from children’s
song-books And we lov'ed it all

I hope I am not making this well-dressed schoolteacher who
was fond of art and music sound hke a pale aesthete. John Baggett
was ruggedly masculine. There never was a ball game in the
schoolyard that he could stay out of, good clothes and all Or
he’d bat fliers for the big boys to catch, and occasionally, just to
show’ off*, would knock one clear over the fence. ^Ve had some
big louts in our school — one was 18 and just back from soldier-
ing in the Spamsh-Amencan ^Var — but none of them could do
that Mr Baggett was also a redoubtable man with a snowball,
and missed few such battles. He was a great hiker before we
knew that word.

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360

In 60 years of teaching, he was absent three days because of
illness. Meeting him m \Vaukegan a year ago, I suggested that
we go to see the old school. He agreed and I called a taxi. He
asked, ‘Don’t you enjoy walldng?’

‘I thought might not,’ I explained

‘I sometimes walk home from Lake Forest,’ he said. Eight
miles — at 78.

Mr Baggett was in overalls one spring Saturday, planting
shrubs in the schoolyard, when some distinguished-looking men
drove up and spoke to him. ANTien he learned they were the
school board of wealthy Lake Forest, he was flustered. ‘If I’d
known you were coming I’d not be mussed up like this,’ he said.

The chairman smiled. ‘We are here because you are the kind of
man who plants things in schoolyards on Saturdays,’ he ex-
plained. They wanted Mr Baggett at twice his \Vaukegan pay.
So in 1904 he went to Lake Forest. There he was superintendent
for 35 years and there, as superintendent emeritus, he still
teaches two days a week.

Since he had earned only S90 a month in "Waukegan, his
S180 at Lake Forest sounded like riches The first month he
spent S 1 00 of it for a model of the Winged "Victory of Samothrace,
to stand in the hall. It’s there yet. They got a bargain in John .
Baggett. He decorated the schools for them, out of his o^vn
pocket. He just couldn’t help it.

Lake Forest appreciated him. As part token, they sent him on
a trip to Europe in igio and again in 1926. Europe was a
delight to him; he haimted the galleries, seeing the originals of
pictures he had loved for years; visited the ‘famous scenes’; and
tramped afoot over the locale of Scottish Chitfs. But his great
adventure came in Dubhn.

Outside Phoenix Pzirk he found Baggot Terrace. Learning
that there was a Baggot family, he ventured to call at the great
house in its lOO-acre grounds, where he was received by a
courtly gentleman, Henry Baggot, six feet four, white-haired.
John Baggett explained diffidently that he was interested in the
similarity of names, that his parents had come from Ireland,
and so on.

Henry Baggot proved to be his uncle, an older brother of the
scapegrace lad who ran away to America at 16 to seek his
fortune, but to end as a woodchopper and the father of John

ARE YOU ALIVE^

361

Ba^ett The old uncle wept wth emotion, then scolded him for
misspelling his name He led his nephew through the mansion
and displayed his collection of Renaissance paintings He show cd
him Baggot Park, wath its mar\'ellous shrubs and flowers He
led him to Tnmty College and showed him the Baggot room in
which hangs a portrait of his great-great-aunt, a pioneer among
women educators John Baggett had been right in his boyish
intmtion; he came from gentle stock.

‘And so, you see,’ he explained to me very seriously, T desen'c
no credit at all. I inhented my love for pictures and flow ers, and
whatever gift I have for teachmg w'as a faimly trmt, too ’

5MS

. ARE YOU ALIVE?

Condensed from The Nation
STUART CHASE

There seems to be an ascending scale of values m life, and
somew'here in this scale there is a hne- probably a blurred
one - below W’hich one more or less ‘exists’ and above w'hich
one more or less ‘lives’.

■\\Tiat does it mean to be alive, to hve mtenscly?

I do not know what life means to other people, but I do
know’ what it means to me, and I have w'orked out a personal
method of measuring it

Take the days as they come, put a plus beside the Imng hours
and a minus before the dead ones, find out just what makes the
hve ones hve and the dead ones die. Can w’e catch the truth of
hfe in such an anal)’sis? The poet ivill say no, but I am an
V accountant and only w’rite poetrj' out of hours.

^ly notes show a cleissification of 1 1 states of being in w’hich I
feel I tun ahve, and five states in which I feel I only exist. These
are major states, needless to say. In addition, I find scores of
sub-states are too obscure for me to analyse. The ii ‘plus’
reactions are these.

I seem to hve when I am creating something - writing this

F\Ttt pu^xihti tn *The tUaia^i Di^esT in 1922

362 reader’,s digest omnibus

' article, for instance, making a sketch, working on an economic
theory, building a bookshelf.

Art certainly vitalises me. A good novel, some poems, some
pictures, operas, many beautiful buildings and particularly
bridges affect me as though I took the artist’s blood into my
own veins.

\ The mountains and the sea and stars - all the old subjects of
a thousand poets - renew life in me. As in the case of art, the
process is not automatic - I hate the sea sometimes — but by
and large, I feel the line of existence below me when I see these
things.

, Love IS life, vital and intense. Very real to me also is the love
one bears one’s fnends.

I live when I am stimulated by good conversation, good
argument. There is a sort of vitality in just deahng in ideas that
to me IS very real.

“ I live when I am in the presence of danger, rock-climbing,
for example.

- I feel very much alive in the presence of genuine sorrow.

I live when I play ~ preferably out-of-doors at such things as
stvimming, skating, ski-ing, sometimes driving a car, sometimes
walking.

' One hves when one takes food after genuine hunger, or when
burying one’s lips in a cool mountam spring after a long climb.
• One lives when one sleeps. A sound, healthy sleep after a day
spent out-of-doors gives one the feehng of a silent, whirring
dynamo. In one’s vivid dreams I am convinced one lives.

'' I live when I laugh, spontaneously and heartily.

In contradistinction to ‘living’ I find these states of ‘existence’

' I exist when I am doing drudgery of any kind adding up
figures, washing dishes, answering most letters, attending to
money matters, shaving, dressing, riding on street-cars, buying
things.

■■ I exist when attending the average social function - a tea, a
dinner, listening to dull people talk.

, Eating, drinking, or sleeping when one is already replete,
when one’s senses are dulled, are states of existence, not life

- Old monotonous things -city walls, too familiar streets,
houses, rooms, furmture, clothes -drive one to the existence
level.

CRASH IN SHANGRI-LA

363

Sheer ugliness, such as one sees m a slum, depresses me
mtensely.

I retreat from life when I become angry. I e.^t through rows
and misunderstandings and in the blind ileys of ‘getting e\ en’.

So, m a general way, I set life off from existence. It must be
admitted, of course, diat ‘hving* is often a mental state quite
mdependent of physical enwonment or occupation. One
may feel, in spnngtune, for mstance, suddenly ahve m old,
monotonous surroundings. Then even dressing and dishwashmg
become eventful and one sings as one shaves But these outbursts
are on the whole abnormal

My notes show that in one week, of the t68 hours contained
therem, I only ‘hved’ about 40 of them, or 25 per cent of the
total time. Tlus allowed for some creative work, a Sunday's
hike, some genuine hunger, some healthy sleep, a httic stimu-
lating reading, tivo acts of a play, part of a mo\mg picture, and
eight hours of interesting discussion with vanous friends I
beheve that I could deliberately ‘live’ twice as much in the
same hours as I do now, if I would come out from under the
chains of necessity, largely econoimc, which bind me.

It may be that the states of being which release life in me
release it in most human bein^ Generally speaking, one’s
salvation is bound closely with that of all manfand - the ratio
of hving groiving wth that of the mass of one’s fellow men.

CRASH IN SHANGRI-LA

Condensed from an International Hews Sen tee Feature

CORPORAL MARGARET HASTINGS
IN COLLABORATION WITH INEZ ROBB

Sunday, 13 May 1945 was a super-special day at the Far East
Air Service Command in Dutch New Guinea Eight of us \VACs
(Women’s Army Corps girls) wxre going to get a look at Hidden
Valley, a cliff-walled Shangn-La deep m the mterior. entirely
cut off from the outside world by towering mountains. Every

Ftni pviltshed ir *TJit Rfoda's DiSfsf «« 1943

364 reader’s digest omnibus

pilot who had flown over it had come back with a tall tale. The
natives were all giants. They were head-hunters and cannibals.
Their lands were cultivated, and cnss-crossed with irrigation
ditches. All the women were Dorothy Lamours in blackface.

I was the first person in the big C-47 . 1 went up the aisle and
took the first bucket seat behind the pilots’ compartment. But I
couldn’t see very well out of the %vindow, so I walked back and
took the last scat, next to the door. This decision, based on pure
caprice, undoubtedly saved my life.

I ^\'inked at S/Sgt. Laura Besley opposite me. She was a dark,
pretty girl and we used to have double dates together. Pfc.
Eleanor Hanna grabbed the seat next to her. ‘Isn’t this fun!’ she
yelled above the roar of the motors.

I didn’t know many of the men who began to fill up the plane.
I recognised T/Sgt. Kenneth Decker as the man to whom I had
refused a date weeks earlier. (He never let me forget it, either,
all the time we were imprisoned in the valley.) About the last
two people to enter the plane were Lieut. John S. McCoUom'
26, and his twin brother, Lieut. Robert E. McCollom, known
as ‘the inseparables’. By that time, the plane was loaded to
capacity with eight "WACs and 16 men, including the crew.
Lieut. Robert McCollom went forward and found a seat. But
there was none left for John.

‘Mind if I share this window wth you?’ he asked me.

‘Certamly not,’ I shouted.

So God took him by the haCnd, no less than me.

AVe climbed SAviftly over the Oranje Mountains, a magnifi-
cent range but covered with jungle. It was a beautiful, clear
day. The jungle looked as soft as green feathers, and I kept
thinking if you fell into it you couldn’t possibly get hurt. We
reached Hidden Valley in 55 minutes, and the plane descended
rapidly until we were not more than 300 feet above rich, well-
cultivated fields. IVe had a fleeting glimpse of a cluster of round
huts ivith thatched roofs, and then started climbing towards the
pass in the mountains.

Suddenly I felt John McCollom give a violent start. I looked
doivn. The big plane was shearing the tops of the tall jungle
trees.

‘Give her the gun and let’s get out of here,’ McCollom
shouted.

CRASH IN SHANGRI-LA

365

I thought he was jokmg. It never occurred to me that
were going to crash until the plane hit the side of the mountain.

I never lost consaousness, but it is hard for me to say just
uhat happened next. Suddenly I ^^as bouncing, boundnsr
bouncing. The air ^s•as filled ivith explosions like gunfire. As"l
bounced for the last time, I realised that someone had wrapped
his arms tightly aroimd my waist Already fire ^\as scorching
my face and hair. I had ^wa^s heard that in times of crisis
people can summon superhuman strength to aid them I know
this is true. I ^^eigh less than 100 pounds, yet I managed to
break that \'ice-like grip, and started to crawl on mv hands and
knees - an^-thmg to get away from the flames.

Incredibly, not more than 30 seconds had gone by from the
time the C-47 struck the mountamside.

‘My Godl Hastings'* someone cried as I stood up. It was John
McCollom, without a scratch on him. The fact that we were m
the rear of the plane and that the tail broke aw ay from the rest
of the fuselage sa\ ed our hves.

Before we could say another word, we heard the only cr^' that
ever came from the plane : a woman calhng for help McCollom
whirled instantly and dragged a girl out of the mfcmo. In
another second he was in the plane again and back with another.
They were the two ^VACs who had been seated across from me.

Then a man came staggering around the right side of the
plane. A hideous gash on his forehead had laid his skull bare.
lEs hair was matted against his head. It was Sergeant Decker
If he had been a supernatural figure, his sudden appearance
could not hat e been more astoundmg. He stood st\ a^ing on his
feet, muttermg o\er and over. ‘Helluva way to spend ^our
birtiiday.’ Later we discovered that this May 13 was Decker’s
36th birthday.

‘Hastmgs, can’t you do something for these girls’’ McCollom’s
crisp command partially snapped me out of the shock w hich had
held me almost rigid. The two girls were Iting together. Eten
I, who had had no experience with death, could see that
Eleanor Hanna was d)ing. Laura Besley was hysterical, but
apparently unmjured.

The fire tvas spreadmg, and we had to mote qmcklt.
hlcCoUom picked up Eleanor, and we started totvards a little
ledge some 25 yards atvay — an interminable distance in the

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366

jungle. ^Vc had to contend ivith the indescribable ivreckage
caused by the plane as it snapped trees and matted the under-
'groirth in its fall. I noticed that I didn’t have any shoes, and my
nght foot was badly cut and bleeding. Later I discovered that
my legs were burned. Much of my hair was burned off and the
left side of my face was bhstered. But neither Decker nor I felt
any pain until our bums became infected.

We had crashed at 9,000 feet and already we were chilled to
the marrow. Now the daily ram of New Guinea began to fall,
and soaked clothing added to our miseries. McCollom made
repeated trips to the plane to see what he could salvage. Never
once did he let us know the agony he was enduring. In that
funeral pyre was his twin brother, Robert.

He foimd emergency life rafts and stripped them of every-
thing we could use: big yellow tarpaulins, small tins of water
and hard candies, and a signal kit. He put a tarpaulin over the
other two girls, gave Eleanor a little morphine, and then,
exhausted, crawled under another tarpaulin with Decker and
me. I guess you have to share the kind of paralysing -accident
we had before you can realise that imder such circumstances
you cease to be tivo men and a woman. \Ve were just three
human beings bound together by a \vill to live.

■\\Tien dawn came, McCollom knelt by one of the girls for a
few moments. Then he said quietly, ‘Eleanor’s dead.’ "We did
not talk and we could not weep. McCollom wrapped her
carefully m a tarpaulin and laid her beside a tree. That was all
that could be done.

For breakfast we had a sip of water from the emergency tins,
a vitamin pill each, and a few pieces of hard candy. Laura,
Decker and I were aU shaking uncontrollably. It was agreed
that we would spend the rest of this day and mght on the peak,
trying to recover from shock. Then in the morning, we would
start down the mountain. Secretly I wondered if, irithout shoes,
I would ever be able to make it through the jungle.

'We knew the Army would search for us. The first plane came
over that morning. McCollom grabbed the mirror from the
signal kit and worked it frantically. They did not see us, but it
made us feel a thousand times better just to know that they
were looking for us.

As usual, mist and rain began to close in on the moimtam in

CRASH IN SHAXGRl-LA 367

niid-afternoon. I crawled under the tarpaulin with Laura. She
was terribly restless. Not even the morphine w e gave her quieted
her. I dozed a while, and when I woke up, Laura w-as so still it
frightened me I screamed for McCoDom He came o\er and
fdt her hands and her pulse He didn’t say a word. He just got
another tarpaulin and ivrapped her in it, then Izdd her down
beside Eleanor. I ought to have felt terrible gnef for tins dear
friend. But all I could think was. ‘Now’ her shoes belong to me.’

McCoUom lighted a cigarette and gave me one. He staied
with me till it w'as hght No night will ever again be as long as
that one.

■\\Tien daylight came, we started down the mountain
McCoUom w’rapped most of the emergenc\’ rations, the water
and two flashlights in a big pack that he carried and made a
smaller one for Decker. He gave me a small pail with the da\ ’s
rations, two cans of water and a handful of hard candy.

■McCoBom w'ent ahead 1 w’as in the middle and Decker
brought up the rear. Everything in the jungle reached out to
daw at us My hair hung more than half-w ay to my w’aist, and
the men were alw’ays having to untangle it Finally I said in
desperation: ‘Please, McCollom, hack it oflT.’ McCollom got
out his pocket-knife and cut off all but an mch and a half
of hair.

IVe stumbled into a steep gully and followed it. Before long
we were tryung to keep our footing m a swift mountain torrent,
laced wuth waterfalls, that seemed to leap straight down the
mountmnside. Once we came to a 12-foot drop. McCollom
grabbed one of the rope-hke vmes that are all over the jungle
He swung out and over the waterfall and let himself down

‘Gome on, hla^e'’ he ordered. Before I could think, I had
grabbed the \’ine and si\*ung dizzily mto space Next it was
Decker’s turn. He dropped mto the water beside us, gnnncd,
and said; ‘Damned if I ever thought I’d understudy Johnny
IVeissmuIler*’

By midday we w’cre exhausted, our bodies numb with cold
\Ve could hear the search planes overhead but we knew the\
w’ould never see us in the stream, roofed over by jungle. \\ e had
to reach a clearing if the planes were ever to spot us

For breakfast next mormng we had a httle more hard cand\
and some water. I w’Ould have given anytlimg for a cup of hot

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368

coffee. By this time, my feet, my legs and one of my hands were
infected. It was all I could do to keep up, and I was half blind
with tears I didn’t want the men to see Once when McCollom
got way ahead of Decker and myself, I cried hystencally:
‘McCollom has gone off and left us, and he’s got all the food,
and we’re going to starve to death!’

Right there. Decker turned into a tough top sergeant. He was
even sicker than I, but he knew what he had to do to keep me
going. The least thing he called me was a piker and a quitter.
I got so mad I wanted to kill him. But I got to my feet and
stumbled on doivnstream No one knows better than I that I
owe my life to McCollom, and it shames me to the core to thinV
that even in hysteria I doubted him for a moment.

About 1 1 o’clock that morning, after five hours in the water,
we came to a clearing McCollom pulled himself up the eight-
foot bank and yelled ‘Come on, this is it!’

Decker went up first, then dragged me up. I sprawled on my
face, unable to move. We lay there and panted and ached, and
tned to soak warmth mto our shaking bodies.

Around noon, we heard the motors of a big plane. I thought
we would never get the yellow tarpaulins spread out on the
ground. Miraculously, the plane circled back over the clearing,
and -ttuthin a few minutes the pilot cut the motors. Then he
dipped his wings.

We, who were so tired we could scarcely stand ten minutes
before, now jumped up and do%vn. We screamed and waved our
arms.

Now we could even make jokes. Decker said, rather gloomily,
‘I suppose one of us \vill have to many Maggie and give this
adventure the proper romantic ending.’

McCollom looked at me critically and said ‘She’ll have to
put on more meat before I’m interested ’

I snapped • ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in
the world. I’m going to many^ Decker*’

Poor Decker looked at me in great alarm and said, ‘The hell
you are*’

But even though I had just been rejected by two men, it was
still a beautiful day. We sat and speculated about how long it
would be before the Army began flying supplies to us. While we
were rejoicing. Decker asked, ‘Do you hear something funny?’ It

CRASH IK SHAKGRI-LA 369

sounded exactly like a pack of dogs gapping. But we knew at
once %\hat it was - the natives
All the things iv e had heard about them ere suddenly \ cr\
clear and ominous, they i\ere seven feet tall, they i\erc canni-
bals, they practiced human sacrifice, they uere fierce warriors.
And we three were armed wth one pocket-knife’

‘There’s nothing we can do but act fhendly,’ said hIcCollom.
He ordered us to hold out our only food, the hard candy,
adding his jack-knife to the pitiful gifts.

‘Stand up,’ McGoIlom barked, ‘and smile ’

Black heads began to pop out from behind jungle trees. IVe
smiled. We smiled for our byes. "We held out our gifts, and tlicn
we waited.

There were about 100 men with wicked-looking stone axes
over their shoulders The chief led the way. Our smiles by this
time had the fixity of gramte About 15 feet from us, the
natives stopped and clustered around. The chief was talking
sixty to the second And then his ugly face crumpled into a
beaming smUe It was reprieve. It was friendship. It was hfc.

The chief stepped up to McCoUom and held out liis hand
McCollom,*weak inth relief, grabbed it and wrung it. The black
man W’ho never before had seen a white man and the ivhitc
man who never before had met a savage on his owm ground
understood each other. The smiles had done it.

^ ‘How are you? Nice to see you,’ hlcCoUom kept saving over
and over. ‘Here’ Meet Corporal Hastings and Sergeant Decker.’

We suddenly realised that the natives were more afraid of us
than we of them' Far from being seven feet tall, they averaged
around five and a half feet. And certainly they didn’t look very
fierce. Their clothing consisted of a thong around their waists,
from which a gourd was suspended in front and a huge tropic
leaf hung, tail-hke, in back. All but the chief, whom McCollom
nicknamed Pete, wore snoods made of heavy string hanging
from dieir heads dowm their backs In these snoods they tucked
anj'thing they had to carry -even tobacco, the coarse native
leaves which they rolled into short green cigars.

Pete and his followers had the biggest, flattest feet we’d ever
seen.<And some of his boys smeared themselves with a smelly
black grease tQmake themselves look even blacker.

Now we tried to press our gifts on them. I thought of mj

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compact, and they were wildly delighted with it, gurghng and
chattering like magpies when they saw their own faces. .

By this time, I was so tired my throbbing legs would no
longer hold me up and I sat down suddenly. The natives
gathered round me curiously, and no wonder! I was a sight to
behold. The left side of my face was black from bums. My
eyebrows and eyelashes were gone and my nose had begun to
swell. My hair stood up in short tufts all over my head. I was a
sight, all right, guaranteed to fascinate only savages or doctors.

McCollom showed Pete the injunes Decker and I had
received Pete shook his head solemnly and muttered, ‘Uhn,
uhn, uhn.’ That was the only native word we ever picked up
When the natives talked to us, we would always hsten carefully,
and from time to time mutter, ‘Uhn, uhn, uhn ’ They would be
delighted.

Before the natives left us that day they returned the jack-knife,
the compact and the hard candy. Never would they accept
presents.

The next morning an Army plane dropped cargo chutes to
us. The first one contained an F-M radio, operated somewhat
like a walkie-talkie. McCollom swiftly set it up and said into the
mouthpiece, ‘This is Lieutenant McCollom Give me a call. Do
you read me^ Over.’ Instantly and clearly, the reply came.
‘This IS 31 1 (number of circling plane) calling 925 (number of
plane that crashed) I read you 5 x 5-’

The plane could hear us perfectly!

McCollom reported the details of the crash and told our
names. An Army doctor in the plane said he would parachute
medical men in to us. We felt better for the mere promise of
aid. When the plane flew off, there on the knoll across from us
were Pete and his chums, squatted on their haunches, grinning
and watching us hke an audience at a Broadway play. They
had built a httle fire and were puffing their home-made cigars.
McCollom, Decker and I were dying for a cigarette. We had
plenty of them, but no matches.

‘I’m going over and borrow a light from the neighbours,’ said
McCollom So he got a light, and we all smoked, the natives on
their knoll and we on ours.

The plane had dropped us some supplies, but the chute had
fallen in the j’ungle nearby. As we puffed we thought of the

CRASH IN SHAXGRI-LA

3/1

luscious Spam and K rations probably a^vaiung us •\vithin a
stone’s throw.

‘There are only two things to cat that I hate,’ I said dreamily.
‘One IS canned tomatoes and the other is raisins.’

‘I could eat the tomatoes, can and all, if I could get ’em,’
hIcCoIIom declared ^^•ith fen'our. He hoisted himself up to go
and look for the supplies

McCollom and Decker were both extraordinarv men and
they behaved aln-a^'S mth the utmost fortitude. We didn't know
un^ we got out of Shangri-La that McCollom had a cracked
nb. Decker was ob\'iously badl^ hurt, but just how gra\ely we
were not to (iisco\er until later. Now he staggered after
McCollom, determined to do his share of the work. When they
returned, they were grinning Uke apes. In their hands were
cans of the only food they had found - tomatoes'

Later the men went back and found a half dozen jungle kits
containing medicine, bandages and jungle kni\cs McCollom
attended to Decker’s and my mjuries. It must ha\e made him
as ill as It did me to look at mv legs. Bracelet bums around cacli
calf had turned into big, e\il-smelhng, running sores M^ feet
were gangrenous, too, and so was my hand I was in terror lest
I lose my legs. But this was no time for hj'steria I helped
McCollom put omtment on my legs and feet, and he bound
them up.

The ttvo men looked at me, dirtj', dishc\ died - and no
resemblance to those Holh-wood heroines who go tlirough lire
and flood with water wave and chiffons undamaged
‘}vlaggie, you are certainly a sad sack*’ Decker commented
‘Neither one of you is exactly a Van Johnson,’ I snapped They
were just as dirtj' as I, and wnth four-day beards to boot
‘It’s your turn now, Decker,’ McCollom said ^Ve didn't c\ cn
attempt to treat the angry gash on his forehead He took off his
trousers and lay face doi%n "What we saw horrified us both, and
made us realise what pain Decker had been suffering m silence.
His back had been badl'> burned, and the bums were shockingl)
gangrenous. It must hate been agony to hate us touch him
But I cleaned the area as best I could and put omtment on it
Decker, in great pain - though he net cr complained - could
barely mote by mghtfall, and 1 tvas too sick and weak to walk
For the next 72 hours, good, patient McCollom - himself on

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the verge of exhaustion — had to take care of me as if I were a
baby. It %vas patent to all of us - though we never mentioned
it - that Decker might- die and I would lose my legs unless the
medical paratroopers reached us soon.

The Army plane got through m the morning with more
supplies ^Vc told them not to drop the medics near us. The
terrain was too wild and hazardous All of us were afraid
someone might be lulled trying to rescue us

McCollom dragged the supphes to the knoll. He lugged up a
big package of pants and shirts Then he found blankets and
tried to make comfortable beds. At last he stumbled up the
knoll yelhng, ‘Eureka! We eat!’ In his arms was a package of
ten-in-one rations. If he had been Oscar of the Waldorf with a
1 2-course banquet, we couldn’t have been happier. All of us
reached for the same thing the canned bacon and eggs. Much
to my amazement, I couldn’t even finish one small can.
Apparently my stomach had shrunk.

That afternoon Pete came to call and brought his tvife.
Mrs Pete wore the snood-shopping-bag arrangement around
her head, but neither she nor any of the women used ornaments
All they wore was a G-string woven of supple twigs. They were
graceful, fleet creatures, and as shy as does.

We were all dog-tired by the time McCollom got us
settled for the night. But we hadn’t been in bed an hour when
we were surrounded by Pete and his followers. They held out a
pig, yams and some httle green bananas. ‘They want to give
us a banquet,’ McCollom groaned.

We tned to make them understand that we were sick and
exhausted. Pete, who must have had a wonderfully under-
standing heart in that wiry black body, comprehended at once.
He clucked over us reassunngly and herded his followers home.

In the middle of the mght a tropic cloudburst struck us. The
men were on higher ground Their bed was wet, but at least it
wasn’t floating. So they had to make room for me.

‘Lord*’ groaned McCollom. ‘Are we never to get rid of this
woman!’

At noon next day the plane was over us again. They dropped
more supplies and told us that two medical paratroopers would
jump t^vo nules down the valley.

When I finally spotted the medics down the native trail, I

'CRASH IN SHANGRI-LA

373

couldn’t keep the tears back. Leading the way and limping
shghtly was Corp. Ranuny Ramirez, his face spht in a wde,
warm smile. He was better for our morale than a thousand-
dollar bill. And behind him came S/Sgt. Ben Bulatao, one of the
most kind and gentle men God ever put on earth.

Both Doc, as we promptly named Bulatao, and Rammy are
Filipinos, as were all the enlisted men who later parachuted to
our aid. They rolled up their sleeves and went to work Rammy,
who had sprained liis ankle, hopped around on one foot like a
cheerful sparrow Doc made sortie after sortie into the jungle
to bnng out the supplies. They built our first fire at mghtfall
and made us hot chocolate It was heavenly

Then Doc went to work on Decker and me. It took him two
hours to-sterihse and dress Decker’s head wound, and another
t\vo hours, working by flashhght, to dress his gangrenous bums.
Then he started work on my legs The bandages were stuck
fast Doc tried to get them off without hurtmg me too much,
but he ivinccd as much as I did-

‘You ought to see the way I rip them off’ McCollom
encouraged him. But I %vas beyond the point where I nunded
pain. All I ivanted was to save my legs

Next mormng I awoke to the headiest auroma in the world -
combination of hot coffee and fiyong bacon. Doc and Rammy
ivere getting us our first hot meal in a week Then for six hours
Doc peeled the encrusted gangrene from Decker’s infected
burns Never by a flinch or a whimper did the sergeant reveal
the torment he was enduring. In addition to his other injuries.
It was now revealed that his right arm was broken at the elbow.
There ivasn’t any anaesthetic or even a stiff dnnk of whisky
available to ease lus pain

It was a Sunday mormng when the Army plane came over
Avith eight enlisted paratroopers and one officer, Gapt. Cecil E
^Valters. ‘\Ve are going down to the big valley about ten miles
away and drop the paratroopers,’ the radio operator said. ‘They
will be wth you by nightfall.’

The men reached us the folloiving Friday' They jumped not
ten but 45 miles distant. But it was good to know that help was
coming to get us out of the valley.

Among the suppfies dropped that Sunday was my rosary.
Prayer books were dropped for us, too, and a Bible When Doc

N

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374

started the peeling process on me, I wondered how I could
endure it. I clutched my rosary and gntted my teeth. I was
determined to be as good a soldier as Decker. Four hours Doc
worked on me and I didn’t make a sound, but I was yelling
inside all the time. Still, my heart felt lighter. Decker would get
well and I wouldn’t lose my legs.

On Monday I felt so much better m body and in spirit that I
wanted a bath. I was filthy. On the side of the knoll, out of
sight of camp, Rammy set up the soldier’s universal bathtub,
his helmet. He found soap, towels, a washcloth and clean
clothing. Then the men carried me down the hill and left me
to scrub up.

I took off my pants and shirt and started to bathe. But all at
once I felt as if I were not alone. I looked around, and there, on
a neighbouring knoll, were the natives. I never could figure out
whether they were goggle-eyed at the queer rite I was perform-
ing or at a skin so different from theirs.

On Friday afternoon, 25 May, Captain Walters blew into
camp. He is 6 feet 4 inches tall, and looked like a giant as he
came down the trail at the head of his Filipino boys and the
ubiquitous escort of natives. His arrival was like a strong, fresh
breeze. ‘Shoo-Shoo Baby,’ he was singing at the top of his lungs,
literally jitter-bugging dotvn the trail. Five paratroopers \yere
with him; three others had been left behind in the big valley
to build a ghder strip.

Walters was a personahty kid. Often after supper he would
put on a one-man floor show with a wonderful imitation of a
night-club singer or a radio crooner. Then he would truck and
shag, while we and the natives watched entranced. He was
wonderful for morale.

Two days after Walters and his men arrived, the Army plane
parachuted to us 20 crosses and one Star of David for the burial
of the seven girls and 14 men killed in the crash, and the dog
tags identifying each one. ^Valters took a burial detail to the
scene of the crash. As they put up the star and the crosses, and
draped each with a dog tag, the plane circled above. Over the
radio came the saddest and most impressive funeral services I
have ever heard. We sat around the camp, silent and very
humble, as a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jewish chaplain in
the plane read burial services for the dead. Our hearts ached

CRASH IN shangri-la

375

for John McCollom He sat wth head bowed, his usual
controlled self.

Back at base the Army was expenmenting %vith glider rescue
A plane could not land even in the big valley, but it might be
possible to land a glider there, take us aboard, and tiaen pull
the glider out avith a tow plane I think our virtual inaccessibdity
really dawned on me when ^Valters explained that we were in
an area designated on all maps as ‘unknown’.

By this tune, Pete and his natives seemed like old and
dear friends They adored Doc. Every morning he set ofF
on a round of jungle calls, like a country doctor. Tropic skin
ailments and festenng sores yielded to modem drugs like
magic.

When Doc finally announced, on 15 June, that Decker and I
could travel, we said our farewells to Pete and his men. The
term ‘savages’ hardly apphes to such land, fnendly and
hospitable people. The greatest miracle that befdl McCollom,
Decker and myself^ aside from our escape from death m the
crash, was the fact that the natives were good and gentle. As
we left, they followed us down the trail, weeping.

I started out on the 45-mile trek to the ghder stnp with a
chipper confidence that melted m 30 minutes. The steady
infantry pace set by the paratroopers was too much for me. We
crawled over fallen logs, hopped from tree stump to tree stump,
wallowed in mud By midday, I was so lame and m such agony
I wanted to shnek. Decker was equally badly off. But neither
of us would give in. "We knew it was impossible for the others to
carry us out over that jungle trail.

Surely the followers of Moses when they came upon the
Promised Land saw no fairer sight than that which unrolled
before us when we stood on the last height overlooking the Big
Valley of Shangn-La. It was a beautiful, fertile land, nnged by
the giant peaks of the Oranje Mountains. A copper-coloured
nver wound through the valley’s green length. There below us,
clearly marked, was the ghder strip, and a small, neat U.S.
Army camp. The three paratroopers who had stayed behmd
had obviously worked like beavers.

Captain Walters made a brave entry mto the camp, truckin’
every mch of the way. For this special occasion, the radio
operator in the Army plane hovermg over us had brought

376 reader’s digest omnibus

along a gramophone and some records. He piped the captain i •
into camp with some resounding boogie woogie. ; 1

Sergeant Baylon and Sergeant Valasco couldn’t wait to show
me the boudoir they and Master Sergeant Obremca had built.

They had partitioned off a section of a tent as my ‘room’. They
had made a deep bed of grass and canopied it handsomely with
a beautiful yellow nylon parachute, and there was a bedside rug
made of parachute bags. I was deeply touched. Everything
about the camp was de luxe, including a bathroom with a tub
made of waterproof ration cartons This was Grand Hotel, and
the new guests were voluble and appreciative.

The Army plane dropped us a bag of assorted shells to use as
a medium of exchange with the natives. They proved magic.

The sergeants had soon purchased seven pigs. One, a runt, was
named Peggy in honour of me. Peggy followed everyone around |

like a dog, and the moment any of us sat down she chmbed on
our laps.

The day after our arrival we started out to visit the native
village. We were stopped by an old man of dignity and authonty.

He showed no ill will, but made it clear that he didn’t want his
village invaded. So I pouted as prettily as I knew how, batted
what few stubby eyelashes I had left, and cooed, ‘Aw, Chief,
don’t be mean!’ ’

Right before our eyes, the old chief melted. He motioned that
I might proceed, but only with three others. I met the chief’s
wife that day. We liked each other instantly. Again it was a
case of the understanding heart, for neither of us was able to
understand the other’s language.

I visited the queen often after that. We would sit in the com-
munal room where the women did the cooking, and munch hot
yams. Her Majesty did not think much of my GI clothes. She
wanted me to swap them for a G-string of woven twigs such as
those worn by herself and her ladies-m-waiting.

One day when I was visiting the queen, I absentmindedly
ran a comb through my hair. She was enchanted. Half the
village gathered round and I combed my hair until my arm
was tired.

Every piece of equipment we had in camp fascinated the
natives. Yet they wanted none of it. They would use a good GI
axe or jungle knife when workmg for us. But they reverted to

CRASH IN shangri-la

377

the stone axe the minute they had an^^thing to do for themselves
They w ere too smart to permit a few chance Msitors from Mars
to change the rh)’thm of centuries.

We found no evidence in either valley that the natives had a
religion. There were no idols, no altars. ‘The/re behevers in
mankmd,’ Captain IValters once said. That is as eloquent a
tribute as anyone could make to the bcha\'iour of these kindly
people.

Fmally we learned that we were to be picked up in a ghder
from the floor of Shangri-La by a C-47 transport plane nick-
named Leaking Louise. On Thursday, 28 June, the ghder sailed
gracefully into the ^•alIey and settled on the runway. ^Ve A\ere
all out on the field before the pilot, Lieut Henry Paver,
could step out of his plane.

‘This express takes off in 30 minutes,’ he told us.

‘Thirtj' minutes'’ I shneked. ‘^Shy, I’m not even packed.’

We raced back to the tents to get Ae stone axes and the bows
and arroira e had bought as souvenirs of our life in Shangri-La.
The C-47 circled above, waiting to snake the glider into the air.

The natives understood that we were gomg. Tears streamed
down their faces. I knew I was losmg some of the best and
kindest friends I v\ ould ever have I blew my nose rather noisily,
and discovered that McCoUom and Decker were domg the
same thing.

‘Don’t be upset if the tow-rope breaks on the first trj',’ Paver
said in a tone meant to be reassuring.

‘I\hat happens if it does?’ McCollom demanded.

‘Well, sir, said Paver, ‘the Army’s got me insured for $10,000.’

I clutched my rosary and wondered if we had survived a
hideous plane crash and so much hardship, illness and pam,
only to be killed when rescue was so near. The C-47 roared
down on us in a power dive. I froze to the rosarj' and the ghder
brace. There was a sudden jolt, then we began to slide dovMi the
strip Now v\e were off the ground and beginmng to chmb IVe
grazed a treetop and I instmctiv^ely leaned back in horror I
id not know imtil later how perilously close we had come to
being spilled into the jungle a second time. The towrope had
dragged through the trees and slowed the Louise down to
105 m.p h , which at that altitude is slow enough to stall a big
ship Major Samuels, at the controls, managed to keep her

378 reader’s digest omnibus

fljTngj but he told us afterwards what a near thing it was. When
he was recommended for the DFC, he said \vith great feeling
‘I wouldn’t do it again for a dozen of them!’

Suddenly we became conscious of a constant slap-slap on the
bottom of the ghder. We had picked up one of the big cargo
parachutes that marked the glider strip. Little rips began to
appear in the frail body of the glider where the parachute kept
rhythmically spanking it. Before long, the hole ran the width of
the glider and was about two feet across. W’e had merely to
look down to see everything over which we were flying It was
nerve-racking.

It took us only about go minutes to fly out of Shangri-La into
Hollandia, though it seemed as many hours. But eventually
Paver set the damaged glider down in a perfect landing. I
stepped on to the field, 47 days after my take-off for what was
to have been a four-hour routine flight.

As we walked towards the photographers’ flash bulbs I
clutched instinctively at McCollom and Decker. I realised more
fully than ever how lucky I had been to survive the crash with
such men. Each, in his way, had suflfered far more than I.
Back on that mountainside, a white cross marked the grave of
McCollom’s twin brother. Ahead of Decker stretched long
weeks of hospital for his many injuries.

I thought gratefully of Captain Walters and his Filipmo
paratroopers who were still in Shangri-La. And, as I walked
away from the ghder, into my old hfe once again, I thought of
the 21 back on the mountain peak under the little white crosses
and the Star of David. Only then could I weep.

SMS'

Many people’s tombstones should read: ‘Died at thirty.
Buned at sixty.’ Nicholas Murray Butler.

You can’t kiss a girl unexpectedly, only sooner than she
thought you would. Jack Seaman.

THE- RESCUE ON STATION CHARLIE

Condensed from T 7 « Atlantic Monthly

CAPTAIN PAUL B. CRONK

At 3.40 on Monday afternoon, 13 October 1947 the giant
flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen took off from Foynes, Eire, for
Gander, NeAvdoundland. On board were a crew of seven and
the largest group of passengers ever booked for a transatlantic
flight -62, including 30 men, 20 women, 12 children.

At 2.32 a.m., somewhat behind flight-plan schedule, the
Queen passed Ocean Station Charlie, a weather post about
too miles west of mid-Atlantic where the U.S. Coastguard
cutter George M, Bibb ivas keeping her vigil.

It had turned mto a wild, ivindy night, but the crew of the
aircraft was ‘well satisfied ivith the progress of the flight, and
expected no difficulty.’ The chance to return to Foynes ivhile
there was still enough fuel remaining (the pomt of no return)
was lost during a period of obscured stars after leavmg Station
"Charhe.

At five o’clock the overcast cleared and a celestial fix revealed
a position considerably behind dead reckoning A check revealed
the aivful truth that ground speed had been reduced by head
winds of gale force to 59 knots and all chance of getting to
either shore was gone.

Firsi piAliAed %n *Tht lUada^t Di^esf tn 1950

379

380 reader’s digest omnibus

Charles Martin, the 26-year-old ex-Navy pilot, was faced
wdth a decision which, if wrong, would cost the lives of all
aboard. The instinct to continue west towards the nearest land
must have been strong. It was lucky for all those on the plane
that Martin had nerve enough to put about, home in on Station
Charlie’s beacon, and set down alongside the Coastguard
cutter on the sea, 310 miles away

At 647 am., the Bibb received a message* ‘Aircraft call
KFG going to make emergency landing at Station Charlie at
approximately 0800 ’ A message of this nature must be reported
to the old man at once.

Because of a senes of emergencies I had not, except for a
cat-nap or two, slept for 72 hours prior to climbmg into my
hammock at 5 a.m. Now, less than two hours later, my sleep
was interrupted by a quartermaster shaking me. ‘Sir, an
aeroplane is going to land near the ship at 0800. Shall I call you
at 0730?’

‘Aye, aye; do that. Tell the OD to have the rescue gear
broken out, and tell my steward to make some coffee.’

I turned over with a sigh and then he was back. ‘Sir, it is
0730 and we have the plane on the radiophone. There are
69 persons on board ’

‘All nght! Man the rescue stations.’

I stood in the cabin, numb ivith shock. Transatlantic planes
carried 21 passengers - the big ones 42. A\Tio ever heard of a
plane moseying around in the middle of the ocean with
69 persons? I went on deck and found that a fresh gale had
whipped up short, steep, angry cross-seas - the most dangerous
possible condition for a plane landing.

All the Bibb’s crew not on watch were topside - more than a
hundred of them. All eyes were turned westward, searching.
Scramble nets were over the sides. Boat crews stood by their
craft. Swimmers in rubber suits ivith webbed fingers and toes
were ready to go overboard.

And then the 42-ton plane hove in sight. How big she was'
My mouth was full of the dust of horror. In my mind’s eye I
saw that flying eggshell collapse as it smashed against the
30-foot waves; saw the wmgs wrenched off; heard the
screams of the passengers as the sea poured in upon them.
‘Oh, God, grant that I do not have to stand here helpless.

THE RESCUE ON STATION CHARLIE 381

Help me save them/ Someone near me ivas vomitmg wth
nervousness.

I called Pilot Martm on the phone, and gave him the
direcnon of the s^vells and the length of the w&ves. I spoke
cheerfully, not feeling at all cheerful.

As Pilot Martm circled, everyone held his breath and watched
with horrified fascination as the Queen slanted towards the sea.
It was almost too much to bear. Not only was it seeing in your
mind the crushed plane aivash, but everj'one knew it ivas too
rough for lifeboats. Hoiv, WTth the ship rolling 40 degrees, could
you take her alongside the fijung boat without beating it to
death?

And then Martin was dowm There are spots where the
different w’ave systems oppose each other and create a com-
pjuratively smooth sea Martm spied one. Flying very slowly
against the wind, he pulled into a full stall. As seen fiom the
cutter, he plunked into a big wave just behind the crest The
Queen seemed to disappear completely m a great wash of white
water, then, miraculously, she reappeared like a huge whale
and w’allowed tow’ards the rolhng Bibk For the remainder of
his mortal existence, every person on that plane would ow'e his
life to the nerve and skill of Pilot Charles Martin.

The Queen thought it would be possible to tow on a hnc from
the cutter while some method of transferring the passengers w as
being cooked up. The Queen started all four engmes and began
working her plunging w'ay tow’ards our lee side. It seemed to
be working out w'cU until, on the top of a huge wave, the plane
w'as seen to be caught m the back ^dy of our lee and entirely
out of control. Martin cut his engines, but it w'as too late.
Depnv^ of the braking effect of the wind, the plane sailed
into the cutter’s steel side. She took the impact squarely on the
nose.

It W'as a sickemng business and looked hke the end Rismg on
a swell, the number-three engine struck the top of a davit,
25 feet above the water-hne, drivmg it inboard The boat crew’
had evacuated so quickly that no one remembered seemg them
do it. The next roll of the ship found the starboard wingtips
smashing the cutter’s cat-w’alk, aft, and the next found the port
^vingtip crashing against the bow’. The ship’s engines, mean-
while, had been going full astern After an eternity the screw’s

382 reader’s digest omnibus

bit into the water and the cutter parted company \vith her
affectionate playmate.

We lowered a ten-oared surfboat; it was wild work. In the
boat were lines to pass to the plane to be attached to injured
persons so that they could be tossed overboard and hauled into
the boat — a desperate expedient but the only one available.

Now we lay to ivindward pumping oil on the seas to smooth
them down. This was not too effective because we were drifting
out of the slick at the rate of three knots and the plane was
blowmg downwind at five knots. (It drifted 100 miles during
the 24-hour rescue operation.)

There were no injured to be removed, and the small boat
reconnoitred about the plane. The boat crew saw the passengers
peering through the windows. The boat dared not approach the
plane from any quarter - both craft were alternately riding the
crest and dropping dizzily into the trough.

Because the seas were steep and short, the plane plunged
violently many times each imnute. It reminded me of a giant
swing at an amusement park, and I felt sick as I reahsed the
suffering and danger of those in the plane, tossed about like
dice in a cup.

After an hour, the order was passed by walkie-talkie for the
boat to stand by to be picked up. The crew were by now
exhausted. Hoisting a boat by a vessel rolling over 40 degrees
offers some difiiculty, but it was finally hooked on. Just as the
boat reached the davit heads a sea rose up, unhooked the
forward hnes and spilled the crew out of the boat. But the crew
was well drilled; each man had a grip on the dangling life-
hnes and now scrambled on board.

Martin, alarmed by the damage the collision had done to the
plane, said perhaps he had better abandon ship in his ‘ten-
person’ life-rafts, but he was told to hang on unless the plane
opened up. The capacity of the life-rafts was based on tliree
persons in each raft and seven m the water hanging on to grab-
lines. The sea temperature was 50 degrees. The weather
forecast promised a cold front and a new gale from the
north-w'est for the next day. That could mean that the current
gale would move away ^vlth a short lull before the next one
struck.

; If Pilot Martin had to abandon ship, his people could take

THE RESCUE ON STATION CHAREIE 383

to their rafts or jump into the sea, and the cutter would try to
fish them out. Over the radiophone he could be heard retching,
but he seemed poised and csdm. It ivas asking a good deal to
tell them to stand such a beatmg indefinitely, waitmg for the
storm’s abatement that might not come or else would come too
late. Yet we felt certain that hasty action might save some but
hardly all.

■We suggested that the plane launch a rubber raft on a line
and see what happened to it. This was done and the cutter did
likewise- The sm^ rafts spim about crazily in the wind.

The cutter launched one of its 15-person abandon-ship-typc
rubber rafts, which did a little better; but even when it stayed
right side up on the water, the motion was so violent that it
was evident that its use would be a desperate measure.

At 3.30 Martin reported that the plane was taking water and
the tail section ^vas coming loose. ‘Skipper, will you try to get
us off, some way, before dark?’ he asked. The chips were down
Sunset was due at 5 32.

I instructed Martin to obtain volunteers from among the
strongest men and get them somehow into a raft If the test we
were about to make fdled, these would have a better chance of
surviiting in the cold water until the cutter could drift down on
them and pick them up. If the raft behaved well it was to
be cast adrift; othenvise the men were to be hauled back on
board.

At first the operation went badly. The raft did not seem
suffiaently mflated, and when a second flash of compressed
GO2 gas was fed to it, it burst. Martin inflated a second raft.
^Vhen launched it rode like a chip on the ocean ivith three of
the plane’s passengers crowded mto it. The cutter drifted down
upon it The loud-hailer blared admonitions not to stand or
reach out until each man received a boivline from the cutter
and passed it around his body. In a few minutes they were
hauled on board. "WTule adrift it was touch and go whether
they would make it, and the experiment demonstrated the
impracticability of effecting the rescue by means of the small
rafts ’SVe decided to use the large 15-person rubber rafts from
the ship.

With darkness approachmg, the action became fast and
furious In no time at all, one large raft ■was leakmg to the point

384 reader’s digest omnibus

where it was useless; a second had been tossed by the sea into
the ship’s propeller; the third and last was bobbing alongside,
trying to beat itself to pieces.

It was clear that towing this raft on shuttle trips was going to
be impractical. A huddle on the bridge produced the plan of
launching our heavy motor surf boat, towing the raft to the
plane, and mooring it there as a loading platform.

The Coastguard 26-foot self-bailing surfboat is the finest
all-round rescue craft in existence Girdled with flotation tanks
and filled beneath the entire deck with air cells, it sheds water
like a duck. But it was designed for use at surf stations, where it
is put into the water from a special launchway.

Launching the 5,800-pound boat from a rolling ship is
another matter. In less than a minute the ship had swung the
boat afoul of the cradle and tom off the rudder shoe. It was a
race against darkness to repair the damage, with the heavy
motor-boat trying to brain the artificers. Finally it was launched
and away from the ship, towmg the big rubber raft down-
wind.

It was not easy going. The light towline broke repeatedly,
resulting in a chase each time, and a heavier line could not be
used for fear of teanng the raft’s thin walls of duck and rubber.
They finally made it, however, and at 5.30 p.m., two minutes
before sunset, the raft began receiving passengers from the
plane. The traditional precedence of ‘women and children
first’ was put aside in favour of ‘famihes will not be separated’.

The first family to leave consisted of an 1 8-month-old baby
held m her father’s arms, a five-year-old boy clinging to his
mother, and a nine-year-old boy who was put in the care of
another woman. The raft was hauled as close to the bow of the
plane as could be done without getting it caught underneath.
First, a man made the leap successfully. The father followed,
the baby in his arms; then the mother, holding her five-year-
old son.

The plane in calm water was 20 feet high; when a trough of
the sea passed, the raft would be 30 to 40 feet below the exit
hatch. Some time during this downward plunge the nine-year-
old boy jumped and landed in the sea. As he was hauled aboard
the raft, the boy complained, ‘I am ruimng my good suit ’
Other passengers landed squarely in the raft.

THE RESCUE ON STATION CHARLIE 385

The ticklish business of the transfer to the motor surffaoat
followed. This was necessary because the raft was not staunch
enoug^h to be towed and the surfboat could not lie alongside the
plane for fear of puncturing it. When the surfboat came
alongside the cutter’s landing nets, its passengers were to be
hauled on board by hnes secured under their arms.

On board the cutter, excitement was at high pitch The boat
crashed against the side as the tvmd pressed the ship doivn upon
it, tossing ^vildly up to the rail, dotm out of sight into the
darkness, flayed by the wind and spray - and in the imdst of it
all a baby held aloft. Eager hands reached out for it A woman
in the boat, hysterically resisting attempts to place a line about
her, screamed, ‘Save my baby! Save my baby*’ So anxious was
everj'one to get the baby quickly on board that men got in
each other’s way. A burly man shouted, ‘Let go, you stupid
bastard* Are you trymg to drown that baby?’ What was funny
was that he was sobbing. The baby was finally snatched up by
those on the nets and passed on board.

The women were hauled on board, weak and limp As they
placed their feet on the deck and sensed their Scifety, they
collapsed and were earned to the sick bay.

The boats, the nets, the deck had been a nightmare of
shouting, tusshng, weeping and cursing crew. Curses of e.\cite-
ment on their lips but prayers in theur hearts.

At 6 10 p m. a group of ten were hauled up the nets, and at
6 34 p m 11 more. During this third tnp the gale reached
45 knots. As we watched Ae plane careemng dizzily in the
beam of the searchhght and the boat threatemng to capsize as
the waves broke through the oil slick into breakers, disaster
seemed at hand.

What ivas happening to the raft while it was being battered
by the seas was not good. The motor surfboat was not doing
so well either. As it lay alongside, it was repeatedly submerged
or slammed into the side of Ae ship, and it began to show signs
of premature old age

The boat rode too deep in the ivater as it again set out for
the plane - the air tanks were filhng up. I judged that this
would be Its last tnp In the meantime, the plane had dnfted
too far away for comfort -my comfort -and the rzift had
broken away from the plane. \^^en after a desperate search in

386 reader’s digest omnibus

the darkness, Lieutenant Hall, the surfboat’s coxswain, finally
found it, it was already deflating.

This time there were 16 passengers in the raft -too many.
Their legs and arms were so entangled that no one could be
swept away by the sea. It was sink or swim together. They
were all yanked into the surfboat but what with the overload
and the leaky tanks, the boat, too, began to sink. However,
Hall had no trouble persuading three of the passengers to go
back into the rubber outfit ivith three of the boat crew.

The raft was held alongside the surfboat by hand. The signal
light weis sought m order to call the ship for help. It could not
be found in the tangle of humamty.

Just then the propeller fouled some of the stray lines of the
raft The gear-case flew to pieces, the engine housing was
smashed by a wave, and the tail shaft and propeller disappeared
The boat broached broadside to the sea, wave after wave
washed over it. Boat and raft were kept right side up by delicate
balancing by the crew.

With the searchlights playing on the scene, I could see
people changing places between raft and boat. Both craft
seemed too deep in the water, but if they were in trouble they
should have signalled with their hght. If I should drift down on
them before they had completed their transfer, someone might
get hurt. On the other hand, if the boat has lost too much
buoyancy . . .

I eased the ship nearer and called them on the loud-hailer.
‘Are you all right^ Acknowledge with your light.’ There was
no answering flash. They shouted something no one could
understand. I worked the ship upwind and drifted down.

We were just in time. A rolling ship, a slashmg sea, a
swamped, sinkmg boat and a submerged raft battering each
other and alternately one on top of the other, 21 half-drowned
people mixed up in it. The whole works tossed up almost to
the ship’s deck by one wave, then dropped down far out of
reach by the next.

The boat crew and the passengers were by turns in the boat,
in the raft and in the sea. Some of the crew were trymg to get
lines around the passengers, others were grabbing someone out
of the water. Suddenly I saw two persons washed out of the
raft and whisked aft into the darlmess. Someone leaned far

THE RESCUE OS STATIOX CHARLIE 38/

over from the bow of the suifboaL One hand held the gum\ ale,
the other darted dou-n into the sea. A collar with a head
sticking out appeared, grasped by the outstretched hand, and I
heard a triumphant ‘Got him’’

All those who were washed out of the boat were saved- "What
■\\e did was to bend a hne around a man’s chest and send him
over the side wth a Ime to tie around a passenger. Both lines
%vere tended on deck by a group. Teams formed all along the
ship, and somewhere along the line the drifters were latched
on to It was pretty rugged for those men danghng from lines,
dunked in the cold sea as the ship rolled, but they were so
excited that not one I questioned noticed the cold.

In less time than it takes to tell it, the 21 passengers were all
out of the sea and safe on board. iVlike Hall was the last up.
He tottered up to me, saluted, and said, ‘Sir, permission to
take another boat over and get the rest of them’’

My reply was, ‘I think you’\e had enough Anyhow, go
below and get some drj’ clothe on. First go to the sick bay and
get a snort.’

The loss of the motor surfboat dimmed the prospects of
completing the rescue. It was certain that a pulling boat could
not tow the raft fast enough to catch the dnfang plane which
was movmg at four to five knots. But if the boat and raft were
to be dropped downwmd of the plane in hne with the plane’s
drift, it imght be possible to close in quick as the plane blew
dow'n and pass the raft’s painter to it

I sent for Ensign Macdonald. ‘Mr Macdonald, do you think,
if w'e put you near the plane, thatyou can take six volunteers, row
over and pass the raft painter to the plane with a shoulder gun?’

Macdonald had seen what had happened to the strong motor
surfboat; he was shivering with excitement. ‘I’ll do mv best,
sirl’ He called over the pubhe-address system for volunteers
Immediately there w’as the sound of runmng feet from all
directions. I cannot say what number volunteered, but it
seemed to be everj'body.

They w’ere out there from g 39 imtil 10.45 P dark-

ness, m a gale, with only six oars. Someumes we caught tliem
with the searchlight on a crest, but mostly ive could not
see them

They passed the raft to the plane — a wonderful bit of boat-

reader’s digest omnibus

388

work. I would not have given a plugged nickel for their chances.
I just hoped. Then they waited an hour for the raft to appear
with people in it, and nothing happened. They conceded failure
and gave it to me on the handy talkie radio.

We got them back on board with their boat. They were used
up. But the plane did have the raft.

I called the officers about me ‘Shall we take a chance on the
plane’s staying afloat until daylight? If it does we can most
likely get every last one of them off Or should we save all we
can now?’

Various conjectures were voiced, but the expression that
seemed to ring a bell of conviction to all present was • ‘^Ve have
used up all our luck tonight. We came awful close to disaster
that last trip. Let’s not push our luck too far.’

If the plane should show sudden signs of sinking, the 22
people on board could go for the raft - some would be on it,
others in the water hanging on to the grab-lines. I was confident
I could drift the ship down on them within a few minutes."
Anyhow, Pilot Martin must decide.

The plane’s radio was dead and we had not had good results
with blinker, so I took the ship close to him and used the bull
horn. ‘How do you feel about spending the night on the plane^’
It seems an absurd question to have asked, but the plane’s
landing lights flashed a dot followed by a dash, meaning
‘Affirmative’. Then complete darkness again; not a light
anywhere on the plane We settled down to watch our charge
for seven anxious hours.

With the plane spotted in the searchlight, I toured the ship
All hands had been broken out at 7 am. and had been
strenuously engaged since. Half the crew were told they could
hit the sack until called for. The others assisted with the
survivors and tended the engineering plant.

At 6 45 a.m., sunrise, the tvind was no more than a fresh
breeze. A treacherous swell was running but, compared with
the night before, conditions were mild. The captain’s gig was
lowered to transfer the remaining passengers; soon it was back
with eight survivors.

The gig shoved off again, got near enough to the raft to take
off two passengers, then had engine trouble and drifted away.
A pulling boat was launched and took off six more.

THE PERFECT CASE

389

One more trip and total success iNOuld be ours - something
I had not dared to hope for. I \\*as taut as an E-string, feanng
some last-minute mishap But the pulling boat came back \rith
the last simivors, and the noble raft t\as cut adrift, its work
finished The gig had got its motor running and pulled up
alongside, and at 8.33 a m. the last passenger climbed o\cr the
rail.

As for Pilot Martin, his was the triumph. Triumph o\er the
sea and the air. Triumph over himself. Ebs ner\'e in turning
back, his mcomparable landmg and his fortitude in keeping his
plane under control after landmg had made this rescue possible.

We could not start for port just yet; not wTtli the big seaplane
wallowing on the surface, a menace to narigation. "Word came
that the operators agreed to destroying it, and I hastened to
do so.

^Ve poured explosive and tracer bullets into the Queen. There
\vas not enough petrol left to make a belch of flame, but the
lub-oil tanks by each of the engines burned fiercely, and by
and by some petrol took fire. The giant tail dropped off, the
wings drooped, and the Bermuda Sfy Queen ga\ e up the ghost.
She was a staunch old girl, though. She kept ah\e until all her
people were saved. Then, dowm she went m a blaze of glor)

THE PERFECT CASE

Condensed from The Rotanan
AKTHONY ABBOT

For a quarter of a centurj it wtis the after-supper habit of the
Rev. Hubert Dahme, pastor of St Joseph’s Church, to take a
\valk through downtown Bndgeport. At 7 40 on the night of
4 February 1924 he was passing along ilain Street, his head
bent against blasts of winter ^vmd, his hands deep m the pockets
of his buttoned overcoat. "WTiere the southerly side of High
Street meets Main, a man suddenly appeared behind the pnest.
He raised his right hand, which dutched a reiohcr, took aim

Ftrsf tn *The lUaitfs tn 1945

reader’s digest omnibus

390

and fired. The shot rang out in the freezing darkness and the
murderer turned and ran.

Seven witnesses agreed that the murderer was a young man
of medium height, that he wore a cap and a dark, three-quarter
overcoat with velvet collar; and that they could see the ghtter
of a revolver in his hand as he ran off. Motive there seemed
none. People of all faiths had loved Father Dahme; 12,000
persons shuffled past his coffin. From behind a screen, the
\vitnesses scrutinised every mourner — but did not recognise the
killer.-

As days passed, no worth-while clue was found, although
thousands of dollars were offered in rewards. Newspapers and
public were becoming indignant, when the pohce suddenly
announced that the mystery was solved, the killer safely behind
bars Patrolmen in nearby Norwalk had nabbed a penniless
tramp who gave his name as Harold Israel; he was young and
of medium height; he wore a cap and a three-quarter length
overcoat with a velvet collar, and m his pocket he was totmg a
small black 32-calibre revolver.

The autopsy had disclosed that Father Dahme was killed
tvith a •32-calibre bullet.

The prisoner told a luckless yam. After some soldiering in
Panama, he had followed two buddies to Bridgeport, but failing
to find work there he was now hiking to Pennsylvania. And he
had an alibi * at the time of the crime he was watching a picture
called The Leather Pushers.

Then came the witnesses to have a look at him. Ballistics
experts compared the rifling of his revolver barrel with the
lump of lead from the dead man’s skull. And one of the prisoner’s
friends, a waitress, had a long private talk with the authorities.
Popular excitement was at feverish height when Harold Israel
suddenly made a hideous confession. Out of work, hungry,
desperate, he declared he had felt something snap in his
brain; overcome by fury, he slew the first human being in
sight.

On 27 May the Criminal Superior Court was crowded when
State’s Attorney Homer Cummings, later Attorney-General
in the Roosevelt Cabinet, rose to present the case of The People
agamst Harold Israel. The gangling prosecutor stood near a
large map of downtown Bndgeport. On the trial table lay

THE PERFECT CASE

391

revolver, bullets and shells, a cap, an overcoat — ominous
exhibits Bets were being made m the corridors that the jury
would find Israel guilty without leaving the box.

The prosecutor summarised ten points against the defendant

(1) . The accused had signed a confession, fully admitting the
crime.

(2) . He had led the police over the route of flight

(3) . He wore a cap and an overcoat wth a velvet collar.

(.j). Two witnesses saw a man XMth a cap and velvet-collared
overcoat actually do the shooting.

(3). A moment later two other witnesses saw the fleeing
slater in cap and overcoat.

(6) . All four witnesses identified Israel as the person they had
seen running away from the fallen body

(7) . Ten minutes after the crime, at a distance from the
scene, another witness saw a man, exhausted from running,
and wearing a cap and a coat witli velvet collar.

(8) . The waitress, wiio knew Israel w'cll, wax'ed to him
through the restaurant window, close to the murder scene and
only a few' moments before the crime, thus blasting his motion-
picture alibi.

(g). Tlic pnsoncr revealed to the pohee that he had hidden
the shell of tlic fatal bullet in his room. Such a shell was found
there by the police.

(10). The prisoner’s revolver w’as declared by an expert to
be the weapon from which the murder bullet was discharged.

Then the State’s Attorney spoke solemnly:

‘There is no evidence that this pnsoncr was subjected to any
physical saolcnce or any form of torture commonly knosvn as
the Third Degree. My own view' nos that, if the facts w'ere
subject to vcnfication, tlic accused svas undoubtedly guilty .
But if goes iLilhout sajtng that if tsjusl as important for a State's
Attorn^' to use the great poivers of his office to protect the innocent as it
IS to convict the guilt}'.’

Tlic pale man in the prisoner’s dock looked up unbelievingly
There w'as a sense of conflict in the air, as if this tall, deep-toned
prosecutor saw and recognised in process not merely the tnal

392 reader’s digest omnibus

of one accused man but a struggle of law and truth itself against
ignorance and greed and all the evil that men know and
practice.

Cummings rumbled on. You will find his astounding address
recorded in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, in the
American Law Review, and other legal journals; it is analysed and
praised in the historic report of the Wickersham Commission.
I have heard the yam as Cummings spins it over coffee cups.
But he told it best on that long-ago May morning in a hushed
trial room, without notes or memoranda, soberly, from the
heart.

The State’s Attorney had investigated the prisoner’s confes-
sion. And here were the facts about that:

Three physicians designated by the State Attorney’s office
reported that when Israel signed the document he was in a
highly jittery state, mentally exhausted and quite cowed by the
identifications of witnesses. His collapse came because every-
thing seemed against him; having confessed, he promptly fell
into a deep slumber, he told Cummings he would have
admitted anything to get some rest. After a night’s sleep he
reiterated his innocence. Now State’s Attorney Cummings,
quoting the state’s chosen physicians, was labelhng the confes-
sion worthless.

The prisoner had indeed ridden with the police over the
route of the flight, but that excursion was meaningless because
there was not in the entire confession, nor in what Israel
showed his captors en route, any new fact' nothing was
volunteered. Israel, still in an exhausted state, had merely
assented to everything.

As for the cap and the overcoat with the velvet collar,
Cummings revealed that certain witnesses hadn’t remembered
them at all until after they read the papers. Some had said it
was a green cap, others grey. Israel’s cap was neither green nor
grey, but bro^vn Scores of men, some right in the courtroom,
wore three-quarter length overcoats - and velvet collars were
epidemic'

‘How easy it is,’ exclaimed Cummings, ‘for similarities in
appearance, and especially in clothes, to be made the basis for
a mistaken identification!’

Yet four Bridgeport citizens said they had seen this very man

THE PERFECT CASE

393

Israel running away from the dying pnest. To try the facts for
himself, Cummings had staged certain discreet dramatics at
Mam and High Streets. One deputy state’s attorney played the
part of the victim, another the murderer. Others posted them-
scKcs exactly where the witnesses had stood, six feet away,
20 feet, 100 feet As Cummings told the court:

‘There is an electric light about 50 feet from the place in
question. A witness would have to fix the features of the
accused in his mind w ithm three or four seconds, and in a dim
light I am shocked when I think that any person would, two
weeks after, assert a positive identification of a person he had
nc\cr seen before based upon such circumstances.’

But the waitress' She knew Israel w’ell and had waved to him
onl\ a short while before the crime. First Cummings checked
the moMC house, Israel’s alibi coincided to the minute with the
showing of the picture. That mght the State’s Attorney planted
himself behind the hash-house counter with the waitress
Person after person marched up and doivn the street, and
neither Cummings nor the girl could tell who they were
Double sheets of stcam> glass in the window, plus reflection
from lights, made the pavement scene a blur; one of Cummings’
assistants, moving by and w'aving, was an 'unrecognisable
phantom The w’aitrcss could not identify her owm fnends who
passed by. She finally confessed that a lawyer had already put
in a claim for the cash rewards for her.

Onlj testimony about the revolver remained, but that was
the most serious of all The empty cartridge on display had
been found in tlic rooming house bathroom where Israel and
his two buddies had lived. But investigation uncovered a great
many more shells there as well' The landlady explained that the
three ex-soldiers had often practised shooting from the bathroom
window at a target in her ^'ard, and had thrown the empty
shells behind the tub

Suspicious now of all the evidence, Cummings called m a
{brmidablc array of technicians from the Remington and
\Vinchcstcr factories. Six experts pointed out hidden fallacies in
the original ballistic analysis. The markings of discharged
bullets are as infallible as fingerprints, but the grooves in the
dead man’s slug had been misread 'With bullets, guns and
magnified photographs, Cummings proved this to the court.

reader’s digest omnibus

394

One final point everyone else had overlooked: all the
•witnesses swore they had seen a shiny revolver in the murderer’s
hand. But Israel’s revolver, black and lustreless, never so much
as gleamed.

After this amazing story of detective work, Cummings told
the court: ‘I do not think that any doubt of Israel’s innocence
can remain. Therefore, if Your Honour approves, I shall enter
a nolle prosequi and let this innocent man go free!’

‘So ordered!’ declared the court.

The mystery of the Dahme murder remains unsolved to this
day Several years after the trial Homer Cummings heard from
Harold Israel. A vagabond no more, he had a job, a wife and a
child, a house, a car - the man against whom gallows e'vidence
had been prepared.' But for the right kind of law enforcement he
might have been ashes in a nameless grave.

aMC'

LIFT UP YOUR EYES TO MARVEL

j*

Condensed from Natural History
CLYDE FISHER

Honorary Curator of Astronomy, American Museum of Natural History

AS TOLD TO HENRY MORTON ROBINSON

Loor up at the star-studded vault of the heavens on a clear,
moonless night. The shimmering grandeur of the spectacle
quickens one’s sense of awe, and dwarfs by comparison the
designs - even the significance — of man. Few gazers will
escape the overwhelming questions of plan and purpose that
the stars suggest; stiU fewer ivill be unmoved by Aeir celestial
beauty.

Seemingly a million stars are visible to the naked eye. Actually,
since we can observe only half the sky at one time (the other
half being on the farther side of the earth), 3,500 is a hberal

First published in ‘The Reader’s DtgesF in 1948

LIFT UP YOUR EYES TO MARVEL

395

estimate of the number of individual stars that can be seen
•tvithout optical aid.

■\Vith a good pair of field-glasses this number can be increased
to 120,000. The loo-inch telescope at Mt ^\'llson shoivs about
1,500 milhon. But there are numberless more, too remote for
any instrument to detect.

Because stars have been the guides and familiars’of man the
mariner, shepherd and camel driver for hxmdreds of centuries,
the more conspicuous ones have beautiful names given them by
•flie Greeks, Romans and Arabs. Polaris, the NorA Star; Altair,
in file constellation of the Fljong Eagle; Arcturus, in the Bear-
Driver, glow -ttith poetic associations as ell as stellar light.
tVith a little practice and the aid of a star-chart, these and
hundreds of ofiier stars can be easily located with the naked eye
and identified by their colour and magnitude.

Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer, divided the stars into six
magnitudes or degrees of brightness. The famtest stars visible to
the unmded eye are of the sixth magmtude; stars two and a half
times brighter are of the fifth magmtude, and so on until we are
dazzled by the blazing stars of the first magmtude such as
Sirius, Arcturus, Rigel and Procyon.

The colours of stars range through the whole chromatic scale.
’iVe can distinguish the sullen red of Betelgeuse, the flushed
■yellow of Mira, the sapphire hue of Vega. Stars vary’ m colour
because they’ vary in temperature. Just as a bar of iron vi hen
heated becomes first a duU red, then yellow, then almost white
as Its temperature rises so a dull-red star like Aldebaran will be
least hot -about 6,000° F. at the surface. Yellowish stars,
Capella for example, are twice as hot The hottest stars in the
sky’ are blue-white, Spica, a blue-white star in the constellation
Virgo, has a surface temperature of 36,000°.

To measure a star’s temperature, the astronomer uses a bolo-
meter— an electrical instrument which exposes a blackened
platinum strip to the radiations of the stars, thereby recording
with minute accuracy the heat of their exteriors. The thermo-
couple, another type of ‘astral thermometer’ used bv the
astronomer, is a tiny ‘radio-tube set’ placed at the main focus
of a telescope.

As v\e gaze at the stars most of them seem of approximately
the same size. But they vary’ greatly. Some can be measured by

396 reader’s digest omnibus

the interferometer, one of the most remarkable tools in the
astronomer’s kit. In 1920, Professor A. A. Michelson noted (as
had many before him) that, when he focused his telescope on a
star, rings of alternating light and darkness called ‘diffraction
patterns’ were seen around it. Michelson arranged two sets of
mirrors on the ‘diffraction pattern’ of the star Betelgeuse so
ingeniously that he was able to record the difference between
the two sets of reflections. Using these differences as the basis
of some complex mathematics, he worked out the diameter of
the star as 270,000,000 miles -a monster with a diameter
30,000 times greater than our earth. Yet Betelgeuse is a pygmy
alongside the gigantic Alpha Herculis - a star so fantastically
huge that if it were in the position of our sun it would engulf the
earth and extend out beyond the orbit of Mars*

Smee thousands of stars of comparable size scintillate in the
heavens, one might think that the sky would be overcrowded.
But as one astronomer has remarked: ‘Set three wasps flying
over Europe, and its skies would be more crowded with wasps
than space is with stars!’

For interstellar space is unthinkably vast. The sun (a star at
the centre of our solar system) is a mere 93,000,000 miles from
our earth. At the outermost ring of our solar system lies the
planet Pluto, four thousand milhon miles from the sun. Then a
great gap - an abyss of space that practically isolates our solar
system from the rest of the universe - until, 25,000,000 million
nules^ away. Alpha Gentauri appears. But Sirius is about twice
as distant! Light reaches us in eight minutes from the sun, but
it takes over eight years to reach us from Sirius.

These gleaming pin-points of light form merely the fore-
ground of the cosmic picture. Much farther away we behold a
great belt of faint pearly light spanning the sky like a powdery
arch. This is the Milky Way, formed by the combmed light of
some 100,000,000,000 stars too remote to be seen separately,
plus enormous quantities of stardust, the embryonic material,
so to speak, of stars yet imbom.

Sir James Jeans describes the Milky Way as the rim of a great
cartwheel revolving around a central hub 50,000 light years

^ Stellar distances are so great that astronomers measure in terms of the ‘hght
year’. Smee hght travels about 11,000,000 miles a mmute, a hght year is
approximately six bilhon miles

. LIFT UP YOUR EYES TO MARVEL

397

from the earth. Our sun is one of the lesser stars of this s>stem
In this galax)' (and there are at least 100,000,000 others sinular
to it in the universe) our proudful earth is comparable to a speck
of pollen floating over the Padfic Ocean-

But measurable distance still stretches out beyond tlie Milk\
■\Va^ ! Aided by the biggest telescopes at Mt IViIson, astronomers
pick up the hght of ‘globular dusters’, bee-like swarms of stars
so distant that their ra^s take 18,000 to 184,000 years to reach
the earth. The star-beam that strikes the eye of the astronomer
tomght from globular cluster M-13 m Hercules, for example,
left its source about the time Neanderthal man appeared on our
planet.

If the remoteness of these globular clusters challenges the
imagination, the still greater distances of the so-called ‘island
universes’ paralyse it Far out in remote depths of space tiiese
‘star clouds’ rush at ternfjmg velodties towards the very' nm of
the universe. Professor Harlow Shaplcy of Han ard has demon-
strated that light firom Nebula hI-87 takes 8,000,000 years to
reach us'

A great deal of nonsense has been wTitten about discoicncs
to be made ivitii the new 2oo-inch telescope atop Mt Palomar
in California. The giant glass w'ould be criimnally wasted, for
example, in gazing at the moon; instruments of moderate size
{six to twenty inches) are the most eficctive for such studies The
primary function of the new telescope is to gather light from
unbelievably distant parts of the umverse, to add vastly to our
knowledge of outer space a thousand milhon light years
away.

Among the problems it may solve is the enigma of ‘empU'’
space. Is the cosmos dosed, fimte in size, ivith definable
boundaries? (This behef is based on Einstein’s theory that space
bends back upon itself- somewhat like the curvature of the
earth’s surface.) Or is it, as Eddmgton behev es, an ‘Expanding
Universe’, filled with millions of galaxies hke our own, con-
tinually'radngfrom each other at incredible speeds into boundless
savaimas of space^

Our present stars are still in a furious state of cosmic con-
flagration, an atomic chain reaction transforming their original
material into heat, hght and dectro-magnetic waves. Our sun
(a tiny star), for example, conv'crts 4,200,000 tons of matter

reader’s digest omnibus

398

into energy every second And it is this potential convertibility
of ‘mass’ into ‘energy’ - daringly expressed by Einstein as a
theoretic formula in 1905 - that gave our physicists their first
positive clue to the awful and unhmited power locked in the
terrestrial atom.

A star is nothing more or less than a vast atomic pile per-
petually in explosion. Under the bombardment of terrific heat
at the centre, its atoms of gas are completely shattered. The
debris of electrons and nuclei dashes about in chaotic disorder.
Yet so terrific is the internal pressure at the core of the star that
the shattered atoms are crushed together into masses of un-
paralleled density - so great that a cubic inch of their substance
may weigh several tons. (Compared with these heavy atoms, our
seemingly solid earth is composed of dandelion fluff.) In sphttmg
the uranium atom, our nuclear physicists merely tapped on a
tiny scale the energy-creating processes taking place constantly
in the stars.

Today practically all astronomical observation is done by
photography stars too dim to be seen even with the aid of the
largest lens can be recorded on sensitised photographic plates
exposed for hours (or days). Changes that might not be detected
by the keenest human observer are spotted by the telescopic
camera. By labonous mathematics Professor Percival Lowell
calculated that the planet Pluto must exist on the outermost
ring of our solar system. But it took 15 years and thousands of
photographic plates to locate this wanderer of the skies.

What, it will be asked, is the ultimate significance of the vast
processes being worked out by the stars? Is there an Intelhgence
operating behmd the colossal panorama of which we can see
only an infinitesimal part? Sir James Jeans, among others,
inclines to believe there is. He suggests, in brief, that the uni-
verse is a magnificent and orderly system. The heat of the ’stars
IS being ‘stepped dowm’ by radiation, from higher to lower levels
of energy, and he argues that the process must eventually end
when all energy is reduced to its final low-tensioned form. No
one can conclusively deny his proposition that the stars came
into existence only to bum themselves out Indeed, the laws of
thermodynamics bear him out. He states, in essence, ‘God is a
mathematician; the universe was not created for human bemgs
at all.’

TWENTY MINUTES OF REALITY 399

Some may find deeper appeal in the philosophy of another
astronomer, the beloved ‘Unde John' Brashear, who asked
that these words from a poem he had read m his youth
be placed above the spot where he and his %\-ife will rest for
eternity ‘\Ve have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of
the mght.’

Under any interpretation, the fiery- consummation of which
Sir James Jeans speaks wall take miUions of ccntuncs before it is
completed 'We have been gi\en ample time, if wc will but take
it, to lift up our ey^es to marvel at the magnificent stellar bonfires
blazing in the heavens.

TWENTY AlINUTES OF REALITY

Condensed from The At^anlic Monthly

MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE

It happened to me on a day when my bed was first pushed
out of doors to the open gallery of the hospital, I w as rccoi cnng
from an operation. I had undergone physical pain, and had
suffered for a short time the most acute mental depression I have
ever encountered. Somewhere doira under the anaesthetic, in
the black aby'ss of unconsdousness, I seemed to hai e discovered
a terrible secret, that there was no God; or, if there ivas one. He
w’as indifferent to all human suffering.

The acuteness of that depression had faded, and only a scar
of fear was left when my bed wais wheeled out to the porch It
wais an ordinary' cloudy' hlarch day, almost a dingy day . The
branches were bare and colourless, and the half-melted piles of
snow were a forlorn grey Colourless little city sparrows flew
and chirped in the trees. Here, m this eiery’day' setting, and
entirely unexpectedly', my eyes were opened and for the first
time in all my’ life I caught a ghmpse of the ecstatic beauty of
reahty.

I cannot say' exactly what the mysterious change w’as, or
w'hether it came suddenly or gradually. I saw no new’ thing, but

FtrH m tn 1947

reader’s digest omnibus

400

I saw all the usual things in a miraculous new light - in what
I believe is their true light. I saw for the first time how wildly
beautiful, beyond any words of mine to describe, is the whole of
life.

It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all
existence to be beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared
to the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness which is always
there; and I knew that every man, woman, bird and tree, every
living thing before me, was extravagantly beautiful, and extrava-
gantly important. A nurse was walking past, the wind caught a
strand of her hair and blew it out in a momentary gleam of
sunshine, and never in my life before had I seen how beautiful
beyond all belief is a woman’s hair. A little sparrow chirped
and flew to a nearby branch, and I honestly believe that only
‘the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shout-
ing for jo/ can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird’s flight.
I cannot express it, but I have seen it.

Once out of all the grey days of my life I have looked into
the heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth, I have seen
life as it really is - ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful,
and filled to overflowing with a wild j'oy, and a value
unspeakable.

Besides all the j'oy and beauty, there was a wonderful feeling
of rhythm as well, only it was somehow just beyond the grasp
of my mind. I heard no music, yet there was an exquisite sense
of time, as though all life went by to a vast, imseen melody.
Everything that moved wove out a little thread of rhythm in
this tremendous whole. WTien a bird flew, it did so because
somewhere a note had been struck for it to fly on; or else its
flying struck the note; or else again the great Will that is Melody
willed that it should fly.

Then the extraordinary importance of everything! It seemed
as though before my very eyes I actually beheld the truth of
Christ’s saying that not even a sparrow falls to the ground
without the knowledge of the Father in Heaven. Yet what
the importance was, I did not grasp. If my heart could have
seen just a httle further I should have understood. Even now
the tips of my thoughts are for ever on the verge of graspmg it,
for ever just missing it. It was perhaps as though that great
value in every living thing were not so much here and now in

TWENTY MINUTES OF REALITY 4OI

ourselves as somewhere else. There is a significance in c\ci^
created thing,- but the sigidficance is beyond our present grasp
hlilton has said:

. . . What if earth
Be hut the shadow of Heaven —

1\Tiat if" here we are only symbols of ourselves, and our real
being is somewhere else - perhaps in the heart of God’ Certamh
that unspeakable importance had to do with our relationship to
the great \\Tiole, but ^\hat the relationship was I could not tell.
Was it a relationship of lo\e towards us’ For those flecung,
lovely moments I did indeed love my neighbour as m\self Nay,
more of myself I was hardly conscious, w'hile with my neighbour
m every form, from wind-tossed brandies and httle sparrows
flying, up to human beings, I was madly in love Is it likely that
I could have experienced such love if there were not some such
emotion at the heart of Reahty’

My experience was, I think, a sort of accidental cicanng of
the vision by the rebirth of returning health Perhaps this is the
way in w’hich w’e should all \iew life if we were bom into it
gnnvn up. As it is, w'hen we first arrive w’e are so engaged in the
tremendous business of cutting teeth and taking steps that we
have no time for outside wonders; and by the time we ha\ c the
leisureforadmiration, hfehas lostits firstfreshness Com alcsccncc
is a sort of grown-up rebirth, enabhng us to sec hfc with a fresh
eye.

Though there was nothing exactly religious m what I saw,
the accounts given by people w'ho have passed through religious
conversion orillummation come nearer todesenbingmy emotions
than anything else that I have come across.

Doubtless almost any intense emotion may open our ‘mw'ard
eye’ to the beauty of reality. Falling in love appears to do it for
some people. The beauties of nature or the exhilaration of
artistic creation does it for others Poets arc not imagining - as
the average mind believes, and as I think I always believed -
the extravagant beauty of which they sing They are telling us
of the truth that is there, and that they are occasionally enabled
to see Probably any high expencncc may momcntarilv stretch
our souk so that we catch a ghmpse of that marv’dlous beauty
which IS alw ays there, but w hich we are not often tall enough to

reader’s digest omnibus

402

perceive. Emerson says, are immersed in beauty, but our
eyes have no clear vision.’

In what I saw there was nothing seemingly of an ethical
nature. There were no rules of conduct revealed. Indeed, it
seemed as though beauty and joy were more at the heart of
Reality than an over-anxious morality. Perhaps at such times of
illumination there is no need to worry over sm, for one is so
transported by the beauty of humanity, and so poured out in
love towards every human being, that sin becomes almost
impossible.

Perhaps some day again the grey veil of unreahty -will be
swirled aside; once more I shall see into Reality. The veil was
very thin in my garden one day last summer. The wind was
blo\ving there, and I knew that all that wild young ecstasy at
the heart of life was rioting with it through the tossing larkspurs
and rose-pink Canterbury bells, and bowing with the foxgloves;
only I just could not see it. But it is there - it is always there
for ever piping to us, and we are for ever failing to dance. We
could not help but dance if we could see things as they really
are. Then we should kiss both hands to Fate and fling our
bodies, hearts, mmd and souls mto life \vith a glorious abandon-
ment, an extravagant, delighted loyalty, knowing that our
•wildest enthusiasm cannot more than brush the hem of the real
beauty and joy and wonder that are always there.

This is how, for me, all fear of eternity has been iviped away.
And even if there were no other life, this life here and now, if
we could but open our dull eyes to see it, is lovely enough to
require no far-off Heaven for its justification. Heaven is here
and now, before our very eyes, surging up to our very feet,
lapping against our hearts; but we, alas, know not how to let
it in!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The condensations reprinted in this book are used by permission of
and special arrangement with the publishers holding
the respective copyrights

•Our Four Montlis oa an Ocean Raft’, copyright 191.7, Xo'th Ainencan Newspaper
Alliance, Inc , 247 W. 43 St, New York 18, N Y

‘M> Eyes Hate a Cold Nose’, from Surr^ Aftdiro-lhlj September 1944, copvnght
1944, Suney Associates, Inc., 1 12 E 19 St, NYC

‘London Nocturne’, from The English Sf^ehrg IForW January 1951, published by
The English Speaking Xlmon, 38 Charles Street, Berkclet Square, London, W t
•The Day \Vc Flew the Kites’, from Parents’ Alagaar^ Mat 1949, coptnght 1049 by
The Parents’ Institute Inc., 52 Vanderbilt Atenue, New York 17, N \

‘The Night My Number Came Up’, from The Setarde^ Ecen ng Post 26 May t9i«.
copyright 1951, The Curtis Publishing Co , Independence Sq , Philadelphia 5 Pa
‘The Basque Sheepherder and the Shepherd Psalm’, reprinted in The Xetimel tics!
Grower December 1949, published bt National Wool Growers Association, 414
Pacific NaUonal Life Bldg , Salt Lake City t, Utah

•The Victorious Vratils’, from The Pngresstse ao December 1943, Progressit e Pub
Co 315 N Carroll St, Madison. Wis

•Htarua of the Airwavs’, fiom Coronet March 1939, copyright 1939, Esquire-
Coronet Inc , 919 N MiAigan Ate , Chicago, 111

‘Child Pioneer’, from Hrorjt/n/nTia/ioral-Gima^ofeanJanuan. 1926, copyright 1925
International Magazine Co Inc., 37 St at Eighth .Ate , NYC
‘Obev That Impulse', dehvered otcr Columbia Broadcasting Svstem Network,
18 March 1941

‘A Bov kVho Was Traded for a Hone’ from the Arnencan Magazire October 1932,
The Crowell Pub Co , 230 Park Ate , N Y G

‘The Titanic is Unsinkable’, from Harper's .Uhgacuir January 1934, copvnght 1933,
Harper & Brothers, 49 E 33 St, NYC

•When Krakatoa Blew Up’, from Haiure ATagazine March 1946, copvnght 1946,
Arnencan Nature Assn , 1214 x6 St, N W , Ikashington 6, D C
‘Mirade Under the Arctic Sea', from The Seturdi^ Eeemrg Post 14 Januart 1950
copyright 1950 byr the Curtis Pub Co , Independence Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa
‘Lmcoln Goes to Gettysburg’, from Ilnfiook June 1936, copvnght 1936, The McCtll
Co , 230 Park Ate , N Y C Repnnted by permission of Harcourt, Brace &. Co Inc
‘Chaplain Courageous’, from Cbllur’s 23 & 30 June 1945, copvnght 1943 The
Crowell-ColUer Pub Co , 250 Park .Ate NYC

•kVe Hate \Mth Us Tonight-’, from The Rotaren Notember 1936, copvnght
1936, Rotarv International, 35 E Wacker Dnvc, Chicago, 111
‘Who Is This Mystenous Murderer”, Crom Pic a Talk Februart 1949, published
by Plam Talk Inc., 240 Madison -Ate., New York t6, N \

‘Mamma and Her Bank Account’, from The Ttrorta Star U'eehfy 18 Januart 1941,
copyright 1941, Toronto Star Ltd , 60 Kmg Street, W , Toronto, Canada
‘Mother’s Bills’, condense from Life Il’i/A Father, by Qarence Dat, copvnght
*935 Clarence Day Published by Alfred A Knopf, Inc., NYC, and bt
Cbatto and kkindus, London

403

404

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘How to Guess Your Age’, from Collia’s 12 February 1949, copynght 1949 b%
The Crowell-CoUier Pub Co, 250 Park Ave, N.Y C How to Guess Tour Age
copynght 1949 b> Corey Ford

‘Gfenius Its Cause and Care’, from The Jfew Republic 17 March 1941, copyright
1941, Editorial Publications Inc , 40 E 49 St, NYC

‘Surgery in a Submarme’, from The Chicago Daily News 14 December 1942,
copynght 1942, The Chicago Daily News Inc., 400 W Madison St , Chicago, 111
‘The Amencan Language’, from The Tale Remew Spnng 1936, cop>’nght 1936,
Yale University Press, 143 Elm St , New Haven, Con

‘Epic of the Arctic’, from True February 1946, copynght 1945, Faw cett Pubhcations
Inc , 1501 Broadway, New York 18, N Y

‘Transaction in Tahiti’, from The Atlantie Monthly, December 1925, copjTight 1925,
The Atlantic Monthly Co , 8 Arhngton St, Boston, Mass Repnnted m On the
Stream oJTracel, copynght 1926 by Houghton MifQm Co , 2 Park St , Boston, Mass
‘Blue Riv er in the Sea’, from Frontiers April 1939, copynght 1939, The Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pa

‘I Was a Male War Bnde’, from The Baltimore Simdty Sun 28 September 1947,
copynght 1947, The A.S Abell Co , Baltunore & Charles Sts , Baltimore 3, Md
‘Two for a Penny’, from The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, copyright 1939
by John Steinbeck, published by Wilham Heinemann Ltd
‘When Hannah Var Eight Yar Old’, copynght 1913 The Atlantic Monthly Co ,
8 Arlington Street, Boston 16, Mass Atlantic Harvest, an Adantic Press Book,
published by Little, Brown & Co

‘WTiat Prayer Can Do’, from Guideposts Jeamaxy 1951, copynght 1950 by Guide-
posts Assoaates Inc , Pawhng, N Y.

‘Pctronella’, from The Star 27 February 1950, copynght 1950 by Argus Pnntmg
and Publishmg Co Ltd , Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa
‘Seven Reasons ^\^ly a Scientist Beheves in God’, from the book Man Does Not
Stand Alone, bv A dressy Momson, copynght 1944, and published by Fleimng
H ReveU Co , New York

‘My Ninety Acres’, copynght 1943-1945, Louis Bromfield, and published by
Harper & Brothers, New York My Ninety Acres ongmally appeared m Cosmopolitan
September 1944.

‘State Fair’, from Holiday August 1948, published by The Curtis Pub Co ,
Independence Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa

‘Mothers of the Wild’, from Field & Stream February 1941, copyright 1941, Field &.
Stream Publishing Co , 515 Madison Avc , N Y C

‘Crash m Shangn-La’, copvnght 1945, Kmg Features Syndicate Inc , 235 E 45 St ,
New York 17, N-Y (International News Service Division)

‘The Rescue on Station Charhe’, from The Atlantic Monthly July 1950, copynght
1950 by The Atlantic Monthly Co , 8 Arhngton Street, Boston 16, Mass
‘The Perfect Case’, from The Rotanan December 1943, copynght 1943, Rotary
International, 33 E Wacker Dnve, Chicago, 111 .

‘Lift Up Your Eyes to Marvel’, from Natural History December 1947, copynght
1947, Amencan Museum of Natural Historv, 79 St at Central Park West, New
York 24, N Y

‘Twenty Minutes of Reaht/, copynght 1916, The Atlantic Monthly Co , 8
Arhngton St., Boston 16, M^ Atlantic Harvest, an Atlantic Press Book published
bv Little Brown & Co